Earth Mama review – new tal­ent arrives on the scene fully-formed

There’s one plea­sure that this job nev­er los­es, and that’s the thrill of wit­ness­ing a new tal­ent arrive on the scene ful­ly-formed. On the evi­dence of the aston­ish­ing­ly-assured debut, Earth Mama, we’ll be see­ing work from writer-direc­tor Savanah Leaf for many years to come.

What this film does is tell a time-worn tale in the neo­re­al­ist mould – here, of a woman work­ing with and bat­tling against a bureau­crat­ic sys­tem that has forcibly par­ti­tioned her from her two chil­dren – and brings some­thing com­plete­ly fresh to the table in the mode of deliv­ery. Leaf devel­ops a series of inter­wo­ven tableaux which empha­sis­es the crush­ing­ly famil­iar cir­cles that the preg­nant Gia (Tia Nomore) is being forced to run in.

It picks a lit­tle at doc­u­men­tary too, in scenes of a sup­port group that Gia attends whose mem­bers try and con­vince her to stay strong against the tor­rent of adver­si­ty. There’s a social-real­ist core to both the film’s dra­mat­ic and polit­i­cal con­cerns, yet many pas­sages of Earth Mama come across with almost dream­like tran­quil­i­ty, with Leaf as inter­est­ed in cap­tur­ing moments of intense cir­cum­spec­tion as she is the heat­ed con­ver­sa­tions with friends and so-called helpers.

It’s an aching­ly sad film, not that any sense of sad­ness is pro­ject­ed direct­ly at the screen. It’s more Gia’s real­i­sa­tion that she is trapped inside a labyrinth that may not have an exit. Though the film is implic­it­ly crit­i­cal of the state-sanc­tioned trau­ma that has been imposed on Gia, it does not take out the human work­ers as col­lat­er­al. But this is must-see film­mak­ing from an excit­ing new tal­ent who doesn’t need tricks or bom­bast to get her vital point across.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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