I Am Here (2015)

the audience applauded

A Major Disappointment

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

Perhaps casting 60-year-old Kim Basinger in a film about a woman trying to have a baby was not a great idea. Although the film was well done, that one huge implausible detail overshadows everything else.

That probably includes my review. It is so odd and different and though the basic story is quite easy to describe, the filmmaker's approach to the subject matter is so unique that I found it elevated what is admittedly a flawed film. Bassinger and Jordan Prentice both do an excellent job in their starring roles. I think the original title "I am here" fit the film much better than the title the 11th hour. I think the intent was to market it a little more as a suspense film, and it may be the reason for the lower rating. It is more an art house film that can be criticized by some as being a bit slow, but the director Anders Morganthaler really does some neat stuff with a continuing theme of Bassinger communicating with the soul of her daughter that she miscarries early in the film. That is why I liked the earlier title. I don't think I have given any true spoilers by discussing this issue. It is not a great film, but certainly worth watching if you are in the mood for something far from the norm.

This was an unimaginably awful movie. The plot was terrible and the dialog stilted as well as often difficult to hear. In fact, it was so bad I wasn't able to finish watching it. Kim Basinger plays Maria, a woman who becomes unhinged after years of unsuccessfully trying to have a child and multiple miscarriages. She decides to go to a town on the German-Czech border and buy a black market baby from a prostitute. For some crazy reason, she decides to enlist a complete stranger -a drug addicted dwarf she picks up on the side of the road- to help her. And instead of buying a baby, he "rents" a baby from a prostitute for an hour, then steals her. Now, all of that is hard enough to buy into, but it just goes down hill from there. Maria has gone to great lengths to get a baby, but has brought no supplies; no car seat, diapers, food, bottles...nothing. She ends up in a hotel with the baby, but there really isn't anywhere in Germany she couldn't have reached with a day's driving, so why wouldn't she have gone home? Now, here is the most implausible part to me...the Russian Mafia, and the baby's mother, come after Maria. The baby's mother is a 14-15 yr old prostitute, in a low class brothel. She has been a prostitute for long enough to have a 3-6 month old baby, so at least since she was 13 or 14. She keeps the baby hidden in a closet, with tape over her mouth to silence any crying. And, Mama prostitute, while reluctant, is willing to rent her infant daughter for an hour to a man she(Mama) believes is going to rape the baby. Which implies she either doesn't care all that much for her child, or indicates an extreme level of desperation. Maybe a little of both. This is not a young woman with resources; if she had any she wouldn't be living as she does. Therefore,I find it hard to believe that anyone in the Mafia would give a damn about her or the baby. In such an organization, Mama prostitute would be pretty much considered disposable, and her baby would have even less value. They might even be glad to have the baby gone - one less thing to distract Mama prostitute from her primary purpose. To track down and capture Maria would take time and money resources that the Mafia would not be likely to waste.

Kim Bassinger is superb in this movie. The movie is everything I expected and more. It's moving, shocking and has a great ending. I don't understand why people tend to give low grades to films like this one. Is it because it's not exactly a horror movie or because Kim has been such a beauty that aging makes her a "no no" actress? I would recommend it to anyone who has had someone close living a problem like this, longing for being a mother and having one disappointment after another. It can make a woman lose her mind, to say the least. I think Kim deserves an Oscar for her performance, which is subdued and conveys all the emotions at the same time.