Home
Motherhood

Page

Motherhood

Summary
How to watch
News & features

❚ We may earn commission from links on this page. Our editorial is always independent (learn more).

Watch trailer

01:32

Motherhood

Name: Motherhood
Director: Marianna Palka
Genre: Comedy
Released: 2019
Duration: 1 h 23 min
Cast: Christina Hendricks, Alysia Reiner, David Alan Basche, Anna Camp, Gbenga Akinnagbe

Save

Comedy

2019
Marianna Palka
83 mins
15

Summary

Over the course of one evening, conceptual artist Tina introduces her eight-month pregnant art school rival Karen to her non-traditional surrogate Kiki. Between them they must face the complications of bringing new life into the world. Director Marianna Palka's comedy, starring Christina Hendricks and Alysia Reiner

IMDB

Review

A star rating of 3 out of 5.

Andrew Collins

Films adapted from stage plays are easy to spot: a single-room set, limited cast and shortish running time heaped with sculpted dialogue. Though Motherhood - a comedy of manners directed by expat Glaswegian Marianna Palka - ticks all those boxes, it was written for the screen by Risa Mickenberg. Originally titled Egg, the film's conflict erupts over the twin approaches to modern pregnancy by art-school friends, who awkwardly reunite one summer's evening in gentrified New Rochelle, New York: radiantly huge, eight-months-pregnant Karen (Christina Hendricks) and rake-thin, reproductively squeamish pseud Tina (Alysia Reiner), who's renting the womb of a guileless surrogate (Anna Camp) with her "woke" African-American partner Wayne (Gbenga Akinnagbe). These middle-class "pregnancy-safe cheeses" seem designed to annoy Karen's cynical realtor husband (David Alan Basche), who cares only for the ballgame he's missing due to Tina and Wayne's holier-than-thou lack of TV. Mickenberg's dialogue is sharp and provocative - "We were both there when they introduced the zygote." "It must've been a precious moment" - and Camp's arrival throws a surprise spanner into the works. You may experience flashbacks to Roman Polanski's Carnage, adapted from a Yazmina Reza play, in which self-satisfied couples do come physically to blows.

imdb-square

5.1/10