Sherry Swanson has been doing three years for theft to feed a drug habit. After she finds a place to live, back in New Jersey, and registers with the parole officer, she tries to resolve what must have been her one obsession Inside: to re-establish contact with her little daughter Alexis (Simpkins). This is of course a major cause of unrest and grief, as Alexis has inevitably got used to treating Sherry's brother (Henke) and sister-in-law (Barkan) as Dad and Mom. Finding work as the caring but institutionally brutal parole officer (Esposito) insists, involves giving head to a fat slob to allow her the job she wants, ironically as far removed from such sordid experience as possible: running a kindergarten for pre-school children. The film throughout swings like this, between the squeaky clean suburbia and the dead-end trashcan of modern America. Maggie Gyllenhaal, as Sherry, walks the line, putting on a Happy Face but able to respond in kind when challenged by aggressive housemates, and unable to disguise her despair at finding it impossible to just pick up the threads of her life and carry on as if nothing had happened, really, in the meantime. One indisputable ray of hope comes in the form of a fellow A.A. survivor, an outsider but completely at ease with himself, Dean (Trejo); apparently descended from indigenous people, built like a champion wrestler - a low-life alpha male. The strongest sensation put over by the film is of seediness and desperation. The sparse use of incidental music works well. It's not the kind of movie that normally attracts Oscars, but Gyllenhaal's multi-layered performance deserves a nomination.
Review of Sherrybaby
