Part of Rita Moreno: Scene Stealer
Sunday, December 5, 2021, 1:00 p.m.
Museum of the Moving Image - Bartos Screening Room

Dir. John Sayles. 2003, 95 mins. 35mm. With Marcia Gay Harden, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Daryl Hannah, Susan Lynch, Mary Steenburgen, Lili Taylor, Rita Moreno. Remarkable for being one of the first films in which Moreno plays a Spanish-speaking character, Casa de los Babys continued Sayles’s turn-of-the-century hot streak, fashioning another compelling narrative out of an aspect of modern life underexplored on film. Steenburgen, Hannah, Harden, Taylor, and Gyllenhaal play North American women who’ve arrived at a South American resort city hoping to adopt babies from a local orphanage. They come from various backgrounds and have different ideas and feelings about motherhood, yet all stand in contrast to the social, cultural, and economic landscape of South America. Moreno plays Señora Muñoz, proprietor of the hotel where the women await their adopted newborns.