Word: self
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...Eliza, are you nuts? They do. Ad nauseam. And they write about it too. You should know that - you're a stay-at-home mom and self-described feminist who writes about small triumphs and big miseries on an oft-neglected blog called the Bjorn Identity. Do you never look at any other parenting websites written from a female perspective? You're also a loyal New Yorker, who guards your West Village neighborhood against tourists who have the temerity to stop to admire it ("It's a neighborhood, people, not a theme park," you snap), so surely you've seen...
...Writer-director Katherine Dieckmann has supplied a simple narrative thread familiar to all mothers: multitasking. This means that if you're already a mother, watching Motherhood is a little like spending a bad day with your most self-involved self. On this day, Eliza must shop for and give a birthday party for her daughter Clara, who is turning 6, care for her toddler (who, Eliza should be grateful, is always nodding off into a convenient nap) and also find the time to pen an essay about "What Motherhood Means to Me" for a contest she would like...
...There's no self-doubt when it comes to the contest; she assumes that if she applies herself even a little, she'll win. She taps away at the keyboard for a few minutes, then heads off to a sample sale with Sheila. (Driver, blooming with her own pregnancy at the time of filming, is the best thing in Motherhood; she's wry and funny and real.) I was too busy eying the racks to see if the legendary New York sample sales are really all that to notice that this marked a serious lapse in Eliza's work ethic...
...adults socializing in a sandbox while their precious offspring play, is so acute. If she would just edit out the few soft touches designed to make us like Eliza - like her kind attentions to an elderly neighbor - Motherhood would play like a flat-out parody of the entitled, self-involved mother, fretting more than she copes and blogging more than she mothers. Isn't that a character ripe for mocking...
...lightness and beauty can make for unexpected delights. Unsurprisingly, “The Real Feel” is so unfocused and incoherent that it sounds either like a throwaway bunch of songs collected over the years or an intentional repudiation of the conventional notion of the album as a self-contained work of art. It is difficult to resist the comparison to Malkmus, whose albums both alone and with the Jicks have been notable for their internal consistency. Every Pavement album had a distinct character too, from the sunny melodicism of “Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain?...