Sundance 2023: Earth Mama, by David Bax

Savanah Leaf’s Earth Mama, as you may have gleaned from the title, is a movie about motherhood and womanhood in general. But it’s not only about those things. In fact, the strongest move the film makes is in its depiction of relentless poverty. From the experience of having a card declined to always making sure to remove the face from your car’s CD player, Earth Mama is both stark and sensitive in how it portrays living in and among poverty.
And yet, in a great credit to Leaf‘s humanity, none of this feels exploitative. This isn’t misery porn. Rather, Leaf crafts a heartbreaking narrative of a pregnant woman named Gia (Tia Nomore) trying to balance her job with her supervised visits with her two previous children in the foster care system as well as with the mandatory classes that same system requires of her if she ever hopes to regain custody of those kids. It’s a damned fine piece of drama but it also empathetically captures the way that being poor means having options so narrow that one thing going wrong can make everything else go wrong. Poverty is a tightrope and those who live in it work harder just to stay afloat than most of us will in our whole lives.
Earth Mama exists so firmly in Gia’s reality that it comes as a shock when, on occasion, the film dips into the surreal. Gia’s anxieties are made material in brief interludes in which she finds herself suddenly in a forest or discovers a rough, thick umbilical cord growing out of her belly. These sections, I suppose, remind us that Gia is not just a factor of the system but a woman, a human being connected to the same world we have all always lived in. Still, they are the only part of the movie that don’t really work. They feel self-conscious, tacked on, extraneous.
On the other end of the spectrum, the cinematography from Jody Lee Lipes (Manchester by the Sea, Martha Marcy May Marlene) could not be more naturally beautiful or organically poetic. This is grainy, 16 millimeter photography but it’s not “gritty” like some 1990s grunge music video. The grain adds texture, moving about in such a way that the film itself seems to be a living, breathing thing that one could reach out and tough (or, as you may find yourself wishing you could do, hug). Meanwhile, Kelsey Lu’s jazzy, discordant score keeps you on edge, never becoming background music.
Nomore is not a professional actor. This is her one and only credit on IMDB. She’s a rapper and she’s not the only musician in the movie. Doechii plays Gia’s best friend, Trina. And Dominic Fike appears as her coworkers at the mall photo shop. And there are probably others I’m not cool enough to know about. But, whatever her level of experience, Nomore is one of the most compelling reasons to see Earth Mama. It’s likely to be one of the best performances of the year.