The Girl in the Park

Dir. David Auburn, US, 2007, 110 mins, with subtitles if appropriate

Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Kate Bosworth, Alessandro Nivola

Review by Carol Allen

This is an impressive directorial film debut for Auburn, writer of the award winning play Proof, in which Gwyneth Paltrow starred both on the London stage and in the subsequent film. Auburn also wrote the screenplay for this, demonstrating once again his ability to create strong and convincing roles for women.

This time the character is older and a mother, Weaver plays Julia, who as a young woman was a successful jazz singer with a happy marriage and a much loved small daughter, Maggie. Her life changes on the day her daughter disappears from the park, where Julia has taken her to play. Sixteen years later, Julia is a solitary figure held in place by a rigid routine. Her marriage is long over, destroyed by the tragedy, and her son Chris (Nivola), Maggie’s elder brother, is engaged to be married and trying to reconnect with his reclusive mother. Then one day Julia meets a young woman Louise (Bosworth), apparently distraught after being dumped by her boyfriend, by whom she claims she is pregnant. Despite Julia’s initial wariness, she slowly forms a friendship with the girl and takes her into her home. Louise reminds her of her lost daughter and she gradually comes to believe that the girl could indeed be Maggie.

Weaver is first class. The opening of the film where we see her sixteen years earlier singing in a jazz club (she’s really rather good) and playing with her daughter, is delightful and gives us the contrast between the woman she was and the tense and haunted woman she becomes for most of the film. The chill moment of loss and panic in the park, when she realises her daughter has vanished, is stomach churning. The relationship with Louise is complex and engaging Julia’s initial suspicion, her gradual warming to the young woman and the ups and downs of their relationship as Louise comes and goes. Despite the unreliability of the character and the lies she tells Julia, Bosworth too engages our sympathies. Julia’s other relationships too, with her son, future daughter-in-law (Keri Russell) and ex-husband (David Rasche), their protectiveness towards Julia and their suspicions that Louise is taking her for a ride, all ring true. The one slightly false note is perhaps her night of passion with her boss Elias Koteas, good though he is in the role. There’s an interesting undertow to the film about the lack of trust and indeed paranoia, which is present in contemporary society and not only with regard to Louise, as in a particularly striking scene, again in the park, where Julia is talking in a perfectly innocent way to the children there and the other mothers call the police.

This is an intriguing and convincing story about family relationships, love, need and renewal, told without sentimentality, which holds the attention throughout. Ultimately it doesn’t matter whether Louise is Maggie or not. Julia is alive again.