A Place for Annie

I was sitting at home last Saturday, bored to tears, turned on the t.v. and for the next two hours sat entranced by this powerful and moving film that really did justice to the HIV-babies and their mothers that we hear so much about.

Top-billed Spacek and Mary Louise-Parker really shine in this film...Parker (who has full blown AIDS) comes back to reclaim Annie, her child, who she was forced to give up when the baby was six months old. Spacek adopted Annie and the film shows the tensions and struggle that the two ladies go through to see eye to eye in the care of Annie. The end may surprise a few people; the entire film is top-notch!

I grew up watching films produced by the Hallmark Hall of Fame. Their quality was often varying, but the general approach allowed for a certain dedication to storytelling. This is one such example. It's a straightforward story on the surface, something that could have easily been produced as a cheap, tear-jerking, disease-of-the-week movie. It's not as though this type of story is inherently cheap or meaningless, it's just that the potential for overwrought melodrama is only too often realized.

Here, the actors prevent that from happening. Sissy Spacek, Mary-Louise Parker, and S. Epatha Merkerson (three of my favorite actresses) perform with a level of real conversational interaction that I really appreciate. I must state, emphatically, that the script offers no individual brilliance whatsoever. This is a slice-of-life type story, one that is held together by performances and the direction of John Gray. I felt like I was watching real lives here, and maybe I was. In so much as film can ever be real, "A Place for Annie" is.

Yes that is basically what this movie is whether you liked the film or not.

I personally did not.

I found it to be patronizing, overly technical and just so damn sappy the important message of the film was almost (but not entirely) drowned under the thick treacle coating and so-so acting.

Why such a brilliant actress like Sissy Spacek continues to make films like this is beyond me, apart that important little word beginning with M (money if you're wondering).

By watching this film you get the idea that it is there to not just educate and make people aware of the situation regarding HIV babies, but to draw it out into a long and almost boring sermon.

Though I do understand and appreciate the fact that this film is appealing to quite alot of viewers, I can only give my opinion by stamping it "BAD".

Sissy Spacek is way too righteous, and Mary Louise Parker too much a snot. What saves this movie is Joan Plowright, and Jack Noseworthy playing normal people, and they do it well. Susan Lansing is a single mother who was thrown out of her family when she became pregnant at 16. Years later she supervises a neonatal unit, and becomes outraged at the benign neglect given to aids babys. She nurtures, fosters, and want's to adopt Annie. Annie's mom, meanwhile has gotten sober and is looking for some redemption. Much follows as the two fight over the child, but the best reason to watch this move is the scene the morning after Linda almost burns down Susans house. Jack Noseworthy and Joan Plowright drive the scene, and it's the best in this movie.

After "Our Sons" with Julie Andrews and Ann-Margret, this is my favorite AIDS movie. There's no need to lavish praise on an actress like Sissy Spacek; her gift is evident as soon as she enters a scene. Spacek uses her customary savvy and elan as Susan Lansing, a nurse who falls in love with and takes in an AIDS-afflicted infant whose mother has abandoned her. The nurse sets up her home with a nanny and her own son as standby only to have the mother return and reclaim her child. Her name is Linda, a bitter, spent drug addict, and she manages to make everyone in the Lansing household ill at ease, threatening to take her baby away. She is, of course, not in any position to care for her child, and Susan, realizing this, begs her to stay. An uneasy truce develops between all concerned for the baby Annie, and it is here that the movie moves us through Linda's disappointments and despair, and the only vestige of hope she has been handed--that Annie will not be touched by disease and have a mother like Susan to raise her.

Lightweight is the way I would describe Mary-Louise Parker's past work; I cannot remember any performance prior to this that was this vivid. She plays Linda like a wounded dog whose howl catches in her throat when she wants to cry. She's defensive and hostile, but her most touching moments are painfully stifled. Parker's presence runs dark and deep; she makes sure the undertow of Linda's grief lurks beneath every frame.

With Joan Plowright as the nanny, and Jack Noseworthy as Susan's son, David. Would that more parents had children like him?