Deep in My Heart

I am the adoptive mother of a black son and he was not legally ours when I stumbled upon this movie while visiting my in-laws. I held him on my lap and cried during much of the film. This is a wonderful movie! I would watch it over and over if I could get it on DVD.

The white adoptive parents in this movie were clearly not people who wanted a child to love and I was sorry that the heroine had to live with them and never felt truly part of a family. However, to see her biological mother embrace her and have her realize at the end how much a part of several families she was warmed my heart. It contains a message of brotherhood and humanness that should touch all people.

A search for a woman's natural mother, turns up not one mother, but three. The search was started to secure medical history for her children, but turned out to be a release of her deep-set emotions. I liked this movie for many reasons. It was based on actual events and shows the value of not giving up, although I felt her search for the truth was "a bit too easy".

A touching telepic, this was perfect for it's original Mother's Day debut. It stars Gloria Reuben (of ER) as woman who grew up in a foster home and now, with her own family life bustling, becomes ever more curious about her biological mother. Flashbacks help the story unfold, from the early '60s where a white woman gives up a black child conceived after a rape. For most of the period that follows, this child lives with a black foster mother (Lynn Whitfield) and grow fond of each other. As a teen, she is adopted by a well meaning but woefully unprepared white liberal (Alice Krige) who gains a black daughter but loses her skittish boyfriend in the process. The young black woman rebels, and eventually runs away, never to return. Now as as she yearns to know the truth and to find her mother, she revisits her foster mother and has a chance encounter with her adoptive mother. Anne Bancroft is superb in a Emmy winning performance as the now aged biological mother. Ruben shines in the lead, and Whitfield and Krige lend fine emotional support. While there are some tear jerking moments in the end, the film itself is more the story of a quest than a simple tearjerker melodrama. Strictly a TV movie, but a very fine one.

I love the way that they portrayed the husband of the natural mother (Geraldine). He was as compassionate as any character I have ever seen and made me proud to be part of the human race. Holding his wife blameless for the rape (which wasn't necessarily the norm during the 50s and 60s); willingness to accept his wife's decision about what to do with the black child--even encouraging her to keep her baby ("it's just a baby"); saving clues of the child's whereabouts for the birth mother, which she found after his death. Truly a touching story and a laudable portrayal. I hope the real life character was equally as compassionate.

This is a really emotional yet fascinating movie, and it was based on a true story! It was made for television in 1999, but it could easily be remade today for theatrical audiences (so the running time could be longer) as all the key issues are still relevant for modern audiences.

Told in interview-style flashbacks, we learn the story of a white woman who was raped by a black man and gave her baby up for adoption. Cara Buona (a great likeness to her older counterpart, Anne Bancroft) was married during her attack, and her husband Kevin O'Rourke was extremely supportive. Not only did he support her throughout the entire pregnancy, suggesting that they wouldn't be positive the baby wasn't his until after the birth, but after he found out it didn't belong to him, he offered to keep, raise, and love the child if Cara wanted to. Cara chose adoption because she didn't want her daughter to live through cruelties by her peers because she didn't look like her parents. She thought it would be best for the little girl to be raised by people who looked like her, an interesting and thoughtful choice during the 1960s (the time of the birth).

Cara and Kevin take their little bundle to Lynn Whitfield's foster home and are treated with contempt. Once again, Kevin shows his support by standing up to Lynn: "You might be used to this, but we're not." Through the years, Lynn forms an intense motherly bond with the little girl (who grows up to be Gloria Reuben), but everyone's hopes and dreams are crushed when she finally gets adopted. . . by a white couple.

That's just the start of the twists and turns of this very interesting story. I wish it were a book so I could find out even more about Gloria's life. If you missed this one when it aired on television, rent it.