DOCUDRAMA Social, cultural concerns raised

Several Oscar winners have parts in the movie, now available on DVD.
By BRUCE DANCIS
SACRAMENTO BEE
When women from the United States who are unable to have children go to a Latin American country to adopt babies, are they committing acts of cultural imperialism?
Are these further examples of "gringo" dominance over the natural resources and people residing south of the border?
Or are these women simply providing homes and families for unwanted children who would otherwise end up unloved and impoverished, while also meeting their yearning need to become mothers?
These daunting questions are some of the concerns of writer-director John Sayles in his movie "Casa de los Babys," which is out on DVD (MGM Home Entertainment, $29.98, rated R).
Although Sayles ("Brother From Another Planet," "Lone Star," "Sunshine State") is well-known as an independent filmmaker with progressive political views, he acknowledges, in "The Making of 'Casa de los Babys,'" one of the documentaries on the DVD, that in this and other films, "I'll often end up with more questions than answers."
What it's about
The film revolves around six women from the United States who have come to an unidentified Latin American country and are staying in the same hotel while waiting for the government to finalize their adoption of local infants.
We learn about the backgrounds and personalities of each of these women during the course of the film. One of Sayles' interests, he says in his audio commentary on the DVD, was to make a film that "deals with the dynamics of a group of women," as there are very few contemporary movies that have done so.
Six extraordinary actresses have these roles -- Oscar winners Mary Steenburgen and Marcia Gay Harden, plus Lili Taylor, Daryl Hannah, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Ireland's Susan Lynch.
In the DVD's several documentary features, they, along with Sayles and his crew, offer their own perspectives on their characters and the meaning of the movie.
Yet Sayles isn't just concerned with these North American women, as interesting as they are. He also provides indelible portraits of some of the Latin Americans who interact with them.
Another Oscar winner, Rita Moreno, gives a strong performance as the owner of the motel in which the women are staying, and Pedro Armendariz, a veteran actor in both American and Mexican movies, skillfully plays her brother, a lawyer who is working with the women as a liaison with the government adoption agency.
Vanessa Martinez, who had appeared in Sayles' "Lone Star," is excellent in the crucial role of Asuncion, a young maid at the hotel, who lives in a ramshackle house in the hills above the city and, like many others, comes down the hill every day to work in the service industry catering to tourists.
Street kids
Then there are the street kids who appear throughout the film, engaging in petty theft, trying to sell anything they get their hands on, getting high on paint thinner, sleeping in alleys or on the beach.
Sayles and his local casting director found nonactors to play these parts, and they effectively make the point, as Sayles puts it in another documentary, "On Location with John Sayles," that these kids "might have been better off if they had been adopted."
And finally, there are the babies themselves. Sayles' camera returns to them several times during the film -- rows of infants lying in their orphanage cribs or on floor mats, being cared for by a loving but overworked older woman. What is their future?
The themes of "Casa de los Babys" -- how people are separated by class, values, politics and language, and how this shapes and affects their interactions -- are familiar ones to Sayles, who brings an admirable sensitivity to various cultures to his movie.