Little Girl Lost

This is probably one of the best movies about child abuse that I have ever seen. I found it in the cheap movie rack at a department store, which is usually where mediocre movies go to die. I was surprised to find a plot that went beyond the formulaic and dealt with the real struggles that accompany child abuse. The main protagonists in this story are foster parents who struggle to keep their foster daughter from being returned to her formerly abusive father. Marie Martin does a superb job as Tella, and when she cries out in terror at having to be returned to her abuser, it seems real. The dynamics between the characters show the real struggles that people undergo when a family is split apart. There is no clear good guy/bad guy dynamic between the legal system/CPS and the foster family, and even the adoptive father muses "they're just people doing their jobs the best they know how." The other heroes in the movie are not whom one would at first expect, but are simply down-to-earth people with which most of us can easily identify. Best of all, this movie doesn't go for the syrupy sweet ending. It does not gloss over the fact that Tella's abuse has forever changed her.