Wiggly Socks Movie Reviews

By Linda Winsh-Bolard

This is a film to watch for the problem, not a problem made it into well-developed film. The restrictions are given by the ramifications of the story, and by filmmaker's attempts not to glorify or dramatize it.

Maggie Gyllenhaal portrays a young woman, Sherry, who just got out of prison and is trying to get back to life. Not her life, her life was, as we slowly discover, being hooked on heroin between the ages of 16 and 22. Later in the film, but with little surprise, we also realize that she was sexually molested by her farther; she still clings to him.

Sherry has a strong reason to go for it, to stay clean, she "cleaned" in prison, to get a job, to get a life that so far avoided her- her daughter, whose father never visits and whose identity leaves a dark question mark on her story. Sherry's brother and his wife take good care of Alexis since she was born, because Sherry was incapable of doing it herself. She named her baby Alexis and pretty much forgotten her in a drug induced ecstasy.

Sherry now wants to change this, but does not really know how to do it. Sherry is what she is- thank to the film's director for reality check- she is not a good or a sympathetic character, nor one whom you'd trust. She is pretty, cheap, uneducated girl who understand that her one source of power, and solace at the same time, is sex. Sex gets her a job in the Catholic charity center, a job she covets because she wants to become a better mother. She passed her training in the prison, a fact that leaves no impression on the job center man, Sherry promptly understands that her breasts and her willingness to provide sex will get her the job. It does.

Sex with the man who runs the half house for women paroles, where she was sent, gives her privacy. That sex does't work on her parole officer (Giacarlo Esposito) baffles her. Men use her, she knows it and accepts it. This is how things work in her world.

But it is not how things works in her brother's middle class world, nor in her wealthy Father's. The confrontation is short, ugly and sends Sherry spiraling back to drugs, alcohol and sex. No one respects her and she can gain no respect, she is told, because she is not trying to achieve anything, she just wants things to happen. And right now she wants her daughter. Trapped by her desire and inability to work out a solution, she does, what she always did- takes.

I won't give out the ending, but there are few like it in real life.

Maggie Gyllenhaal's character is as accurate as possible. Victims of molestations are often irresponsible, unreliable and unable to keep their hands of drugs, alcohol and casual sex. That also makes them unfit parents.

This is where the strength and weakness of this film meet. It is very realistic, candidly shot, Gyllenhaal is also very realistic as a cheap, lost, weak woman with little charm and no self esteem, her family is an ordinary looking family and the system is at best indifferent, at the worst brutal while certainly not helpful.

All that fits. Unfortunately, it is not visually appealing. The film presents a problem that US, with practically no social infrastructure or net, never solved. Solution presented in unrealistic. Yet within the society, the problem won't go away and does affect more than just the perpetrators.

For that, and the acting, go and see it, forgiving the longitude and shabbiness that mirrors life because it just might be intentional.


Written and directed by Laurie Collyer, Camera: Russell Lee Finestars Maggie Gyllenhaal, Brad Henke, Bridget Barkan, Giacarlo Esposito, Danny Trejo, Ryan Simpkins, Brodget Barkan and others.