‘Earth Mama’: Sundance Review

Dir/scr: Savanah Leaf. US. 2023. 99mins

The despairing Earth Mama follows an impoverished single mother trying to keep her head above water, her sea of troubles only rising. Writer-director Savanah Leaf’s feature debut is compassionate towards its subject while being critical of a society that lets people fall through the cracks, forcing them to choose between equally unappealing options in order to help their families. Oakland rap artist Tia Nomore gives a superbly spare performance as this young woman who feels like she’s drowning, anchoring this melancholy exploration of class, race and addiction.

Leaf’s debut is strikingly straightforward, delivering a slice-of-life portrait of poverty that never wallows in misery or tries to be patronisingly heartwarming

Backed by A24 and Film4, Earth Mama premieres at Sundance, and although the film doesn’t boast big stars, the story’s stark, poetic authenticity will certainly leave an impression. Modest theatrical play seems likely for such a muted drama, but good reviews should help raise awareness. 

The picture is set around 2006 in San Fransisco’s Bay Area, where the very pregnant Gia (Nomore) works a dead-end job at a portrait studio, hoping to get her two children out of foster care. Fearful that Child Protective Services will decide to take away her unborn baby as well, Gia must attend classes as part of an agreement with the courts but, because of her limited means, she’s beginning to consider giving the child up for adoption, bringing her into contact with a well-to-do couple, Monica (Sharon Duncan-Brewster) and Paul (Bokeem Woodbine).

Based on her own documentary short The Heart Still Hums, Leaf’s debut is strikingly straightforward, delivering a slice-of-life portrait of poverty that never wallows in misery or tries to be patronisingly heartwarming. Rather, Earth Mama meticulously illustrates how someone like Gia simply cannot pull herself out of her circumstances. We get glimpses of her backstory in offhand snippets, learning that her mother struggled financially to support her and that drugs have been an issue in the past. (There is no mention of the father, or fathers, of Gia’s children.) When Gia goes to visit them she’s a loving mother, but she’s constantly so exhausted and stressed that it’s hard for her to be very present in anything she does. She sleepwalks through her job and her existence, with her growing belly a daily reminder that her worries are only going to increase. 

Enter Miss Carman (Erika Alexander), from an adoption agency, who wants to help relieve Gia’s burden. Initially skeptical — especially after she looks at photos of prospective parents, lamenting that all of them are white — Gia starts to warm to Monica and Paul, a Black couple firmly ensconced in the upper-middle class. They seem like good people — plus, they already have one child — but Gia is swamped with guilt, ashamed that she’s failing her unborn child. But maybe letting Monica and Paul adopt would be better than what she herself could do as a mother?

Cinematographer Jody Lee Lipes shot Earth Mama on film, lending the images a soft, grainy look that nicely balances the ethereal and the gritty. Leaf is striving for a realistic examination, but she never overdoes the suffering, taking time to occasionally put Gia’s naked body on screen, showing the beauty of a woman in the midst of a pregnancy. Shots of sunlight reflecting off water and Kelsey Lu’s jazzy, plaintive score add to the film’s moments of quiet grace, suggesting that Leaf refuses to ignore Gia’s complexities. There is much that is hard about this woman’s life, but Earth Mama makes sure her difficulties never become one-note. 

Nomore portrays Gia as a bit reserved, almost as if she’s learned to withdraw from the world before more bad things can happen to her. But flickers of resentment, envy, desperation and sorrow occasionally flash across her stoic face, especially as she gets closer to the pivotal adoption decision. Duncan-Brewster excels as the financially comfortable wife Monica who is nothing but lovely to Gia, even if she can’t quite appreciate the younger woman’s situation.  

Earth Mama offers no falsely encouraging happy ending, but its clear-eyed humanity nonetheless feels like a balm. In a society that often tries to sweep the poor away so that they’re out of sight, this film encourages us to see — and to care.