London,

The Girl In The Park

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Cert: 15

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Dir: David Auburn. Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Kate Bosworth, Alessandro Nivola, Keri Russell, Elias Koteas

 

Description: Julia Sandburg has never fully recovered from the disappearance of her daughter Maggie from a playground in New York's Central Park. Blaming herself for the loss of her little girl, Julia wrecks her marriage and severs ties to her son Chris, now a successful builder with a pregnant fiancee. Sixteen years after Maggie vanished without trace, Julia encounters homeless grifter Louise and becomes convinced that this resourceful and beautiful young woman could be Maggie. Offering the stranger a room to stay, a delicate bond forms between the two women, re-opening old wounds as Julia contemplates the possibility of reclaiming the child she lost all those years ago.

Country: US. 2007. 110mins

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The Girl in the Park grabs attention

 

Permanent scar: Sigourney Weaver as a mother who loses her child in Central Park

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You would expect something a bit special from David Auburn, writer of Proof, the award-winning play, and his first film as director gives us just that. There are three notable performances in this story of a woman who loses her child in Central Park and never finds her but instead gains a kind of surrogate daughter many years later.

Sigourney Weaver is Julia, who has still not recovered from her loss when she encounters Kate Bosworth’s Louise, a troubled young woman whom she saves from prosecution when she is caught stealing sunglasses from a shop. Allowing the girl, who reminds her powerfully of her lost child, into her home, she begins a fraught relationship with her.

The girl is needy and unreliable and Julia’s son (Alessandro Nivola), who is just getting married and is trying to reconnect with his now divorced mother, knows something strange is going on. Trying to get through to his mother seems almost impossible.

We never learn whether Julia really thinks the attractive but waif-like Louise is her daughter or not. Perhaps she just wants to believe it. But The Girl in the Park is well enough written, and certainly well enough acted, to be an unusually subtle portrait of loss and possible renewal.

Weaver’s Julia is a fine study of a woman whose bereavement has left her totally alone psychologically and there is a wonderful scene in Central Park when the police are called to stop her talking to children around the age of her long-lost child.

Bosworth’s Louise and Nivola as Julia’s son could hardly be better. They, and Auburn, create a portrait of everyday life with considerable skill. It is not without its problems, but this is, at the very least, an attention-grabbing first feature with a fine example of ensemble playing from its cast.

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