Savant loves Lone Star but has always had a problem with John Sayles' essential civics-lesson attitude: it's as if we're supposed to be absorbing the correct message as well as enjoying his pictures. As his pictures have become more interested in displaying complex problems instead of simple conclusions, they've gotten better. Men with Guns confronts the issue of Latin American violence without taking sides, yet is the most coherent movie on the subject. Hollywood would never touch material like this.

Casa de los babys takes a less volatile moral problem and examines it from all sides, encouraging us to consider the positions of everyone involved. Nobody is blamed and nobody is whitewashed. Señora Muñoz (Rita Moreno) is a realist making a living from the abrasion between the relatively rich Anglo adopters and the unfortunates of her own country. She and her lawyer brother don't so much exploit the gringos as exact a high price for their services. We see the pregnant daughter of a wealthy Latina aimlessly allowing her child to go up for adoption because she has no rights. She's no more irresponsible than an American teenager but the experience is going to scar her deeply, even as the baby she produces will possibly become one of the travelers to a foreign land.

Asunción (Vanessa Martinez) is a poor local who works in the hotel. The film's best scene is a pair of dialogues between her and Irish-American adoptive hopeful Eileen (Susan Lynch). We've already seen Asunción grow teary-eyed at the sight of a lonely girl in a school playground and guessed her secret. Her pain and the need of the American tourist are both acute and the scene's poignancy comes from the communication between them, even though neither understands what the other is saying.

Basic domestic issues in American entertainment almost always come down to lame Family Values stories, often associated with cable TV movies. Bad things happen but correct thinking and spiritual guidance will prevail. Sayles's story is clear and honest about women. No matter what their politics or backgrounds, many of them want children as a basic chemical-social need and no criticism or lifestyle pigeon-holing will deter them. These mothers here not to steal children but to become mothers. One country is more powerful and wealthy than the other so the traffic goes one-way. It's a buyer's market and all the poorer nation can do about it is to make the buyers pay as much as possible.

Sayles makes things more interesting by his handling of children. The cute babies to be adopted are coddled by nuns and nanas in an almost idealized nursery. The older nurse is happy knowing her charges are going off to potentially better (or at least materially richer) lives. But Sayles contrasts this with the street kids represented by a couple of preteen beggars, one of whom is curious about reading (a gently-handled angle) but has no opportunity to learn. They scramble for pennies and at the end of the day blow their riches on spray paint with which to get high. The waste of their humanity is tragic, as represented by the hero kid staring at the stars in a drugged stupor.

I've read reviews of Casa de los babys that take Sayles to task for America-bashing, for being an issue-driven director and for just being political, I suppose. How dare he make a picture that doesn't entertain me with fake people in fake adventures, with lots of fake explosions ... Casa de los babys works because it is about people and their real problems. It takes people who care to appreciate it, and maybe there aren't enough of those around.

The extras all come from the IFC channel, one of the production entities that weighs down the picture with the executive producers I've skipped in the credits run. They're good softer versions of the EPK fluff we've come to expect, and we actually learn something about Sayles and the film from them. Sayles' commentary is excellent as usual. He has a calm enthusiasm for his subject matter and communicates an interest in people's welfare. He's also too smart to use his podium for a soapbox, and wisely limits his personal opinions to the topic at hand - mostly acknowledging his own ambivalence on the foreign adoption process.

On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor, Casa de los babys rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements: Sayles commentary, The Making of Casa de los babys, Beyond Borders, On Location with John Sayles IFC featurettes, trailer
Packaging: Keep case
Reviewed: April 2, 2004