Family-Faith Film Review: The Waiting City

Family-Faith Film Review: The Waiting City
By Catholic Office of Film and Broadcasting

The Waiting City—This poignant yet challenging drama follows an Australian couple (Radha Mitchell and Joel Edgerton) to India, where they hope to finalize their adoption of a baby girl. But the tensions created by bureaucratic delays and other complications — as well as their diametrically opposed reactions to their new environment — reveal the underlying fissures within their marriage. Director Claire McCarthy’s well-crafted exploration of emotional bonds and spiritual horizons pits transcendent values against secular ones. The latter is personified by Mitchell’s buttoned-up, work-obsessed character, though the film blurs the line between the pervasive Hinduism on display and the Catholic faith represented by Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity who staff the orphanage where the infant has been living. Complex religious issues, brief graphic marital lovemaking, abortion theme, at least one use of profanity, a few instances of rough and crude language, and some scatological humor. L — limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling. (R) 2010


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