‘Earth Mama’ Review: A Mother Dreams Inside a Brutal System

There are moments in “Earth Mama,” a drama about motherhood at its most fragile, when the film’s quiet depth appears to settle in your chest, as if a heavy stone had been positioned over your coronary heart. Written and directed by Savanah Leaf — that is her characteristic debut — the movie is intimate, modestly scaled and sometimes so outwardly unassuming that you simply may not at first discover its artistry. It additionally options probably the most expressive scenes that I’ve seen all yr, one which reveals a world of heartache with a single digital camera motion.

Leaf eases you into the film, which facilities on Gia (a beautiful Tia Nomore), a pregnant single mom in restoration with two youngsters in foster care. In tight, exact scenes, Leaf sketches in Gia’s life, its unsure horizons and crushing limitations. Gia lives within the Bay Area, the place she shares an condominium together with her sister, an elusive determine in her life, and works in a mall portrait studio. Mostly, Gia struggles to get her youngsters again, a time-consuming course of that includes a reunification program through which she’s continually monitored. She has check-ins with a case employee and takes courses with different moms; at one level, she pees in a cup.

The story tracks Gia as she works, attends this system, visits her youngsters (temporary, aching interludes) and easily navigates a life whose precarity — her card is declined at a retailer, her cellphone is operating out of minutes — imbues on daily basis with a gentle undercurrent of stress. Gia is doing every thing proper; she’s following the principles and staying clear. Yet she will’t get forward. The program’s calls for imply that she will’t work extra hours, however as a result of she will’t work extra, she’s behind in child-support funds, which in flip earns her a scolding from her case employee. If the system appears rigged for Gia to fail, it’s as a result of, Leaf suggests, it’s.

That would possibly sound bleak, however whereas the movie supplies an emotional exercise (there can be tears), it by no means drags you down. Leaf’s delicate contact and refusal to punish or demonize any of her characters are essential on this respect, as is her consideration to magnificence. (The cinematographer is Jody Lee Lipes.) The movie’s drama emerges when Gia, with the assistance of a social employee, Miss Carmen (Erika Alexander, a robust, important presence), meets a household of three for a possible open adoption. Played by Bokeem Woodbine, Kamaya Jones and a heart-rending Sharon Duncan-Brewster, the household is gorgeous, as is the diffuse mild illuminating their anxious faces. (The very wonderful solid additionally contains Doechii and Keta Price.)