"Earth Mama" -- Movie Review

 

On the opening night of the New Directors/New Films Festival, I attended a screening of the new drama, “Earth Mama”, written and directed by Savanah Leaf. 

Synopsis

When a single mother with children in foster care becomes pregnant, will she choose to keep the baby?

Story

Gia (Tia Nomore) is struggling.  She’s a young single mother whose history of substance abuse and inability to maintain a sufficient job has resulted in her son and daughter in foster care.  Further complicating matters is the fact that she’s in the third trimester of her pregnancy and given her history, Child Protective Services may want to take the baby away from her.  The system demands that she work as well as take classes that she must pass in order to even be considered for returning her children to her.  Unfortunately, taking classes means that she can’t work enough hours to make a subsistence living, so it’s a vicious circle. 

She misses her children and they miss her – or at least her son does.  He tends to be more affectionate towards Gia than his sister, who grows increasingly distant, especially when her mother shows up late for their supervised visits.  Gia’s sister can only provide emotional support for her (and sometimes barely that); other than that, there’s no family on which she can rely.  The relationship she’s had with friends up until that point are frayed to say the least.  Finding herself at the end of her rope – and attempting to work within a system that’s trying to defeat her at every turn – Gia finally has to rely on her caseworker for help.

The caseworker presents the option of putting the baby up for adoption.  Reluctantly, Gia makes the difficult decision to do so, even though she would rather keep the baby.  Once the caseworker introduces Gia to a middle-class family that has been looking to adopt for the past few years, she decides they are the right fit for her child.  Also, letting another family who’s economically better equipped to care for the baby will come across as a responsible decision when she petitions the court for the return of her son and daughter.  But when Gia’s daughter is born and tests find that she has illicit drugs in her system, will Gia still be able to get her children out of foster care?

Review

Writer/Director Savanah Leaf certainly proves her talents in “Earth Mama”.  Clearly, she has an eye for how to visually tell a story and her screenwriting capabilities put on display her skill for telling a narrative story in the long form.  However, with this being based on a documentary short she directed previously, it definitely remains to be seen if or how she will be able to tell a feature-length film that is an original fictional story, whether or not it is from her own screenplay.  Hopefully, she will get a shot and doing so before too long and if “Earth Mama” is any indication, she will knock it out of the park. 

Although Leaf takes an unflinching look at the systemic racism in society’s treatment of single mothers and those recovering from substance abuse, her non-judgmental approach appears to fall short after a while when we see the character of Gia making the same mistakes and bad choices over and over again.  She only succeeds in digging a hole deeper for herself until the point where it is almost – if not completely – impossible for her to realistically climb her way out.  Gia seems to have passing moments of responsibility but in the end, remains too immature to take care of herself, much less her children.

Gia seems to get beaten down by the system rather constantly, which contributes to the audience wanting to root for her.  However, the fact that she seems to consistently get in her own way makes it quite the challenge for the viewer to do so.  After a while, one wonders at what point does this young woman learn a lesson and realize that the way she’s been living her life isn’t working for her or anyone else close to her?  What detracts from the film somewhat is there is very little in the way of a character arc for Gia.  We want to see her go from a bad place to a good place, but in order to do so, she has to make an effort – whether she does or not by the end is up for grabs.