In "Mother and Child" three women struggle to manage (control) varying wounds, disappointments and try to force the future into submission in ways that are so real and visceral—and sometimes dangerous—we know on a gut level that their stories, though fiction, are true. That what happened to them can happen to us. And has. And does. And will.

The film uses adoption to tell their interconnected stories and a much bigger story about acceptance and living life on life's terms. Though set in the present, the film utilizes the old system of closed adoptions, where "secrecy often haunted mother and child forever," Mr. Garcia said. The warping effects of secrecy echo in the lives of the three main characters: Karen (Annette Bening), Elizabeth (Naomi Watts) and Lucy (Kerry Washington)—and how each overcomes it from the inside out. Interestingly enough, men, though present and for the most part kind and good are not prominent, which reflects another segment of disownment, disconnect and secrecy in the psyche.

Briefly: Karen was fourteen when she became pregnant and was forced to give the baby up for adoption. More than 30 years later she writes pages and pages to her absent daughter, Elizabeth, played by Naomi Watts. Elizabeth is aggressive and intimidating. "Naomi's character did not accept that she'd been put up for adoption and became very controlling, [like] I will be the mistress of my own destiny," Mr. Garcia explained. She has transmuted this pain into a fierce desire to control and manipulate. Then she becomes pregnant. Finally, Lucy and her husband are unable to conceive. This throws Lucy's fantasy of a well-ordered life into crisis. As it is in life, the more each tries to control the more out of control things become.

Mr. Garcia told me during a phone interview that he made the film with the idea of adoption as a love story. "You go into it with the best of intentions, and there is a selfish aspect. Sometimes it turns out beautifully and terribly and sometimes it's a mixed bag," he said. "You can never foresee the outcome, to people never finding each other, to people finding each other who died, people finding each other and connecting a lot, or very frequently people finding each other and the connection and fizzling out. I wanted to honor that you never know which way it's going to go."

Often when we don't know how things will go, we try to control. "In order to control you have to be aloof, keep yourself at a distance from others," Mr. Garcia said. "[It is] simply understandable mistakes mark a life, chains a life," he added. Whether we make those mistakes or someone else does.

Which brings me back to Alice Miller. Deeply embedded in her writings Miller addresses the need for us to recognize our needs and be aware of our wounds. This is not the end goal, of course; the goal is to progress, to move forward. At some point we want to move beyond them, to transcend and incorporate them. Accepting the unique history of our childhood, as Miller's teachings will continue to remind us, is essential to helping us heal ourselves and our relationships. It can happen, though as "Mother and Child" shows, sometimes not in the way we imagine.

Constance Rosenblum has an interesting review in The New York Times. She writes: "... a film like "Mother and Child" which seeks to explore the topic in a serious and nuanced fashion, and neither preaches nor wrings its hands, is a rarity."