If you follow the Sundance Film Festival, you may be familiar with the infamous midnight screening of Grace, where the theater manager announced the film had caused two people to pass out (sounds like a William Castle promotion!). While there's nothing that oxygen-limiting here, Grace does carry a heavy, pervading discomfort throughout the entire film, an impressive accomplishment for a debut feature.
Grace focuses on the Mathesons, a blessed couple eagerly expecting their first baby. Mom-to-be Maddy (Eli Roth favorite Jordan Ladd) is a vigilant vegan planning a midwife-guided birth, much to the distaste of her condescending mother-in-law (Gabrielle Rose). When a car accident kills Maddy's husband (Stephen Park) and presumably ends her pregnancy, she seeks refuge at her midwife's spa, obsessed with delivering her child nonetheless.
Solet handles the birth with one hand on the empathy button and the other on the freak-out lever. With his delicate direction, we easily sink into Maddy's sadness while cringing at the same time. And the tough stuff's just beginning. In the midst of Mom's mourning, a couple of noises emerge from the just-delivered child and, to the shock of her midwife and doula, Maddy has a daughter named Grace.
Of course, in true horror form, Grace is not completely human, as Solet establishes by way of the baby's offensive odor and ability to attract flies. But Maddy is hell-bent on mothering her daughter at any cost, including risking her life and the lives of others. Ladd goes from obsessively dedicated to dangerously wacko, and with some blurred, narrow focal effects from photographer Zoran Popovic (War, Inc.), the actress does a fine job playing out her fearless fever dream.
For a first-timer, Solet is surprisingly adept at pushing a viewer's button and knowing just how long to keep it held down. As the film evolves, there's a feeling of dread each time baby Grace lets out a cry from the other room; in the time it takes Ladd to get there, Solet amps up the anticipation with a slow camera move or subtle music cue. As for the constant stress and strain of breastfeeding -- it's difficult enough in real life, you can imagine how tough it is when your baby's not, um, 'normal.'
But that line of thinking gives Grace a depth you normally don't get with this genre. At its core, Grace is a nutsy, hyperbolic salute to a mother's love and the nearly indefinable lengths a mom will go to protect her child. With that, Solet acknowledges the health trends of the day, hot-button topics that'll instigate a smackdown at any mom's group in the U.S.
If you're expecting, you may want to hold off on this one for a bit. Same if you're about to breastfeed for the first time. Once you determine your little tyke is healthy and relatively normal, go for it. But you may never look at a baby sound monitor the same way.
The DVD includes plenty of extras, including director's commentary, a collection of behind-the-scenes goodies, and coverage from that now-infamous Sundance premiere.
This milk looks OK to me.
