Directed by Larry Collyer. Starring Maggie Gyllenhaal,
Giancarlo Esposito, Brad William Henke, Danny Trejo. Synopsis:
A young woman who has just been released from prison continues to battle her
drug addiction and personal demons as adjusts to life on the outside in a
halfway house and tries to reorient herself into the life of her daughter.
Sherrybaby is one of those lower budget films that nevertheless has a strong cast, good story, and makes it a quality film. This flick is certainly not upbeat, but it is not the total downer the subject matter might lead you to believe. Sherry (Gyllenhaal) begins the story just released from prison and on her way to her new home in a halfway house- a place that will be, in many ways, more difficult for her than prison.
She also meets her no nonsense parole officer (Giancarlo Esposito Taps) who makes it clear that he has to walk the straight and narrow or he has no problem with bouncing her back into prison. To top it off, Sherry is also anxious to reunite with her small daughter, who has been living with her brother and sister in law for most of her short life.
Sherry's problem, you see, is drugs and the film does a wonderful job of showing us the pressure and the temptation for those with that addiction to get back into the day to day world. Particularly when it comes to young females, as Sherry finds when she has to provide sexual favors to acquire the job she wants but is not qualified to land. There are subplots here, too, and I like the way that director Collyer shows them to us, without making them the focal point of the film but weaving them into the overall fabric of the story. Good examples of this are the implications of abuse from Sherry's successful father and her competition with her sister-in-law as the dominant "mother" figure for her young daughter.
Gyllenhaal does well to make us empathize with Sherry, even when we don't agree with what she is doing. We also understand where she is coming from. A very welcome sight for me in this film was to see Danny Trejo (The Devil's Rejects) in a straight dramatic role as Sherry's drug counselor and love interest. Trejo shows that he has more range than you might think, judging from his usual casting as the likable, cool, tough guy that you would not want to cross.
This is very similar to the wonderful film Down To the Bone with Vera Farmiga , but not nearly as dark. A pretty good flick, in other words.
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