motherhood

Eliza Walsh (Uma Thurman), mother of two who lives in a walk-up in Greenwich Village with her husband, Avery (Anthony Edwards). They have two kids - a school-age daughter about to turn 6 and a younger son. Avery works as an editor at a magazine; Eliza writes a motherhood blog but has to fit that in between chores, errands and other parental duties.



Dieckmann's film focuses on one day in Eliza's life: the day of her daughter Clara's sixth-birthday party. Even as she tries to gather all the supplies necessary for a party in her tiny apartment, Eliza also discovers an online contest, in which she can win an actual paying position as a blogger by writing 500 words about what motherhood means to her. One catch: The deadline is midnight.



Her day turns into a cascading disaster; each piece of bad luck seems to ripple outwards, with one misadventure toppling into another like dominoes. A movie crew moves on to her block to shoot a scene - and so her car (which she treats as a giant purse) is towed away. She takes a bike to run errands - and gets a flat tire. The cake has Clara's name spelled wrong. The line at the party store is endless.



Through it all, she tries to keep her sense of humor, tossing off one-liners and maintaining her civility in a world of pushy people absorbed in their own sense of sanctimony or entitlement. Her husband Avery (Anthony Edwards) seems to be little help; either he is blithely absorbed by his own concerns or he's unreachable, thanks to a cell phone that's turned off.



The harder Eliza works at staying on schedule, however, the less effective the movie seems to become as a comedy. Or perhaps it's that Dieckmann intentionally renders Eliza less funny as the stress starts to wear on her.



Whatever - by the midpoint, the film seems to have run out of steam, along with Eliza. And then something happens that seems to change everything.