"Just because you f***ed some junkie in a street corner doesn't make you his mother!" / dialogue from Losing Isaiah.
The film starts with a drug addict (Halle Berry, who is surprisingly good.) goes around in one of Americas less glamorous blocks with a screaming baby. But the withdrawal symptoms becomes to strong and she lies the child in a container. When she wakes up the next day she can't find Isaiah. She is devastated. (Isaiah has been taken to the hospital when a couple of dust men found him.)
Jessica Lange, Hollywood's best actress, plays the successful doctor that sees a little crack baby lying and screaming on the ward and thinks "Wouldn't it be nice to have one of those around the house?". She adopts the little fellow and raise him together with husband and daughter.
The film jumps between Lange's family that take care of the kid and his biological mother, Berry who is building up a new drug free life. She eventually finds out that her child is alive and, of course, then wants him back. Lange doesn't want to let him go. Berry then hires a tough lawyer (Samuel L. Jackson) and trial it is.
An interesting dilemma. And the film handles it good, very good. You really want to know who will get custody and which of the two mothers who gets the ending frame (and then 'wins' the film). The ending and the ending frame unfortunately is a cowardly compromise.
