IN AMERICA
Directed by Jim Sheridan
Starring Paddy Considine, Samantha Morton
Opens Fri, Dec 19
**1/2 (out of five)

My disappointment with In America is perhaps only partially predicated on the content of the movie itself. It has been nominated for a whole slew of independent film awards on both sides of the Atlantic, it features the consistently intriguing Samantha Morton, and its director, Jim Sheridan, has a short but interesting filmography, including My Left Foot, In the Name of the Father, and a producing credit on last year’s astonishing Bloody Sunday. But none of these factors add up to a movie that’s as good as it should be.

Next to Sheridan’s other films, In America looks like manipulative, heartstring-yanking twaddle that doesn’t trust an audience’s natural empathy. It bends over backward, as it were, to deliver poignant moments that even the most desensitized set of eyeballs can’t fail to miss. Sure, it has some redeeming qualities and beats the pants off much of the other twaddle jostling for your dollar this festive season, but is that really a good reason to lower your standards?

The film opens as Sarah (Samantha Morton) and Johnny (Paddy Considine), with their two daughters Christy (Sarah Bolger) and Ariel (Emma Bolger), smuggle themselves into the U.S. on the pretense of a holiday. But the young Irish family are coming to stay, ostensibly so Johnny can pursue his acting career in New York City. Truth is, they’re intent on escaping the cloud of tragedy that has hung over them since their five-year-old son, Frankie, died a year before.

The family finds new digs in a rundown Manhattan tenement populated by junkies, transvestites, and a mysterious man who screams behind a door with the words "KEEP AWAY" scrawled on it in orange paint. Sarah takes work in an ice cream parlour while Johnny searches fruitlessly for acting work, and the precocious and wise-beyond-their-years children assimilate into their new surroundings.

When Sarah becomes pregnant and decides to have the baby, despite the doctor’s warnings of a problematic pregnancy and birth, all the pain of losing their child surfaces anew and strains family unity. Around this time, the Sullivans meet African émigré Mateo (Djimon Hounsou), the screaming man downstairs whose psychotic rages conceal a gentle, sensitive, quasi-mystical soul that isn’t the least bit unstable. The source of Mateo’s inner torment is that he loves life but is steadily losing his to AIDS.

Apparently somewhat autobiographical–Jim Sheridan co-wrote the script with his daughter Naomi and dedicates the film to the loving memory of Frankie Sheridan–most of problems of In America revolve around its obvious contrivances. The Sullivan girls, for instance, aren’t so much wise beyond their years as wee psychologists, shepherding their emotionally devastated parents through the grieving process. The piling on of melodramatic elements–poor but loving family, beautiful soul with a terminal disease, emotional recriminations, perilous pregnancy–sit rather uncomfortably within the film’s episodic structure, so even though there’s no shortage of substantial plot strands, the story dawdles along with little vignettes that strain the authenticity of its squalid urban backdrop and attempt to leaven the by-rote pathos with predictable humour.

Some of the film’s manoeuvres seem predicated on helping the hard-of-thinking in the audience keep up, as when Sarah’s teary, sweaty delivery of her child is accompanied by the Byrds’ Turn Turn Turn gushes from the soundtrack, or when Johnny and Mateo bark, ridiculously, their innermost feelings at each other in the midst of a heated confrontation, and reach a new understanding of one another in the process. The final 20 minutes heap on the poignancy in near toxic levels.

On the upside, the film is visually lovely, and the performances are mostly fine, with Morton delivering that perplexing mix of sorrow and serenity she practically has a patent on. A couple of times I quite nearly laughed at Considine’s portrayal of Johnny, who looks like he needs to have his jaw wired shut just to keep birds from nesting in there. The psychological shorthand on Johnny, which he explains himself, is that the death of his son has caused him to shut off his emotions. More often, he simply seems like unable to comprehend what’s going on.

I, on the other hand, felt like I had a good grasp on things, and that all these wise children, saintly AIDS victims, cuddly slum dwellers, and other cardboard cut-outs were only diversions on the way to a smile-through-your-tears climax. If that’s all you expect from a highly touted, award-worthy independent film, by all means, have at it.