Uma Ovum

asked to write "500 words about what motherhood means to me," uma thurman as eliza, west village hausfrau and former hipster, spins her stroller wheels. so writer-director katherine dieckmann puts that essay on film as motherhood. this unusually personal movie is also a rare, heterosexual story from christine vachon's killer films production company. even rarer: it's a life-affirming killer film. dieckmann details a young manhattan mother-of-two's juggling act-thwarted ambition, ambidextrous care-and-loving of children, husband and friends. the movie is also, in part, a documentary of city life in white, middle-class new york without apology nor the smugness of last year's noise.

dieckmann carefully avoids yuppie self-congratulation of tv's mostly good thirtysomething series. she views class through economic and leisure-time self-awareness, a quality that also distinguished diggers, dieckmann's marvelous 2007 collaboration with ken marino. parking a car or waiting on cashier lines-daily new york hazards-eliza is told, "you urban moms are like a case study in liberal hypocrisy; you think the rules apply to other people not you." it proves dieckmann and thurman's good spirit that sympathy for eliza does not avoid critique. as a friend said of whit stillman's metropolitan, "debutantes need love too."

indie films seldom justify their makers' own advantages; the unconventional compassion dieckmann showed in that r.e.m. music video "shiny happy people" may be her hallmark. it explains this film's highpoint when eliza admits a gorgeous young messenger into her apartment and schools him on 1980s pop music (pylon) as a proud reflex after exposing her own embarrassing lack of achievement. reminded of the youth, sex and freedom she misses, eliza dances barefoot in joyous egalitarian abandon.

revealing the contradictions of this post-feminist age, motherhood is good enough to recall up the sandbox, the elegant and eccentric 1972 response to feminism, race, class and media that contains barbra streisand's best non-musical acting and irvin kershner's most adventurous filmmaking. it had a similar mix of tones-of real-life elation and frustration as experienced by an intelligent woman in a loving social trap. dieckmann circles that hilarious declaration of independence when streisand defies her own mother's outdated standards: "if this is what it's like to be a mother, i turn in my ovaries!" it's ok when a decent new movie hails a classic.

-- motherhood directed by katherine dieckmann runtime: 90 min.