Everything Put Together

Angie (Radha Mitchell) is pregnant and is having course with her friends, Barbie (Megan Mullally) and Judith (Catherine Lloyd Burns), who are also pregnant. Her husband is in love with her, and they both are preparing carefully the baby's room. Her mother is a busy woman living in another town and does not pay much attention to her. On the delivery, Angie has a beautiful and perfect son, Gabriel, who dies less than twenty-four hours after of `sudden death', without any apparent reason. This is the beginning of Angie´s journey to hell, with the loss not only of the baby, but also of her shallow friendships. This sad movie is very well directed by Marc Foster. All the cast has a great performance, but Radha Mitchell is magnificent. Forbidden for pregnant women. My vote is seven.

First, A WARNING: If you are pregnant or just had a child, do NOT go see this film. Really. You simply don't need some of these concepts swimming around your mind. Trust me.

I found this film depressing without being cathartic.

It certainly touches on some complex aspects of the situation in the film, not least of which is the near-primitive rejection of a 'wounded animal' by the herd (in this case a group of new or expectant mothers.) And Radha Mitchell does an excellent, nuanced job of portraying the shifting emotions and fragility of the main character. Justin Louis - looking an awful lot like Aidan Quinn and portraying a similar type of character (amiable, sensitive, manly) - is also quite affecting as the husband struggling helplessly to make things better when almost any move he makes is doomed to be wrong.

The other characters, too, are well-cast and well-acted. And the photography is just moody enough to have texture without being distractingly 'pretty'.

So, what kept this from being a powerful and ultimately satisfying film (for me)?

First of all, the pacing, which was reminiscent of many French or Swedish films. Lots of lingering domestic vignettes, almost documentary like, setting up who these people are, their relationship, their world. It takes a LONG time to get to the central crisis of the film. And once it occurs, there's lots more lingering domestic scenes.

All of this is justifiable in a film that focuses on the emotional effects of one incident. But it assumes - rather than compels - a certain complicity on the part of the viewer.

More fundamentally though, the fact that the main character seems pre-ordained for SOME kind of catastrophe makes her big reversal seem more inevitable than shocking. It doesn't help that she's portrayed as deeply anxious from the start. So much so that at times this feels like an early Polanski film, preparing us for something really awful. So, when the worse does occur, rather than being shocked, we're almost relieved.

Add to this the curious choice to give the protagonist a monstrously remote mother and what would be surprising here would be for her to ever experience unshadowed happiness. She seems at the least fragile, if not quietly but fundamentally disturbed from the start. The result is that some of her more excentric behavior later seems to flow not from the tragedy but simply from what we know of her character.

Since none of her girlfriends react with common decency, never mind nobility, about the only truly likeable character we meet is the husband, so that it's far harder to be intimately affected by the central events here. Because it simply seems that even if they had never occured, this would never really have been a very happy world.

Still, a good, if not memorable film. Especially for under $500,000. And - a surprising bit of light at the end - some of the most beautiful credits I've seen in a while.

Marc Foster's "Everything Put Together" reminds me slightly of Henry Jaglom's 1994 "Babyfever". Both tell of women as friends and mothers to be, the joy and gaiety while looking forward to the arrival of a baby. But there's a drastic difference between the two: Foster's film went beyond the point of 'entertainment.' It's raising the consciousness to the tragedy and pains of parents losing their newborn to SIDS. Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) - a cause unknown event that may not happen to one's life until the circumstance unexpectedly presents itself.

This film has a similar flavor to the Indie 2000 "George Washington" (w-d: David Gordon Green) - small film, down to earth people, casual feel camerawork with creative angles/effects applied. The subject matter is not your Hollywood safe theme but one that does need to be told and to prompt the awareness of the masses in like situations.

Besides the fact that Marc Foster directed the upcoming due for wide release "Monster's Ball," the name Radha Mitchell drew me to this film. I appreciate her exceptional performance as Syd opposite Ally Sheedy in Lisa Cholodenko's "High Art" 1998. I like the paired energy of Mitchell and Vin Diesel in the 2000 sci-fi "Pitch Black" even though the storyline was slim. It's heart-warming to see her support as one of the producers of this Indie film. Yes, not much publicity - I saw the film with only a handful few on the Friday of its one-week limited release in SF at the Landmark's.

Mitchell gave an impressive controlled performance as Angie, a new mother who so very suddenly lost her newborn. It was hauntingly forlorn seeing her at a lost and how the cheery circle of friends, of pregnant women and new mothers, disappears so quickly into nothingness. This is not "Amélie" fantasyland, this is personal emotions cruelly real. It's reaching out and touching no one. Justin Louis as husband Russ is barely the only support, hardly her emotional crutch. The ambient sound effects and the music by Thomas Koppel enhance the camerawork. The story is hard medicine - uneasy to swallow (that we could possibly be reacting just like Angie's friends and neighbors, having the same fears and callous behaviors; that hospital medical staff attitudes can be insensitive to patients' unfortunate situations...) - such incisive insights!

The length of the film is 1 hr. 27 mins. However, when the end seems inevitable, I felt I don't want it to end just yet - wanted to go on a bit more beyond the very Swiss screen approach we see… I hope it did not result from under social pressures to please or conform…would like to think that she and Russ did came through and that her grief over baby Gabriel has grown into selective pleasant memories and renewed outlook.

Definitely a worthwhile film to appreciate. Thank you to the people and efforts in the production of this film.

the previous reviewer commented that people didn't act like this in real life--first of all, it is meant to be a slight parody; second, people DO act like this. i thought the movie was a fascinating examination of the kind of mindset that prefers to keep everything in its place--"put together", you might say--and doesn't know what to do when a round peg suddenly becomes square.

"Everything Put Together" would be a really great movie....on another planet. Good on execution and implausible on story, this serious little indie drama tells of a woman who is ostracized when her baby dies from SIDS. Of course no one behaves like the characters in this flick which sinks the credibility and makes the buy-in all but impossible. Just more flotsam on cable which may have some token entertainment value for the needy sofa spud. (C)