The Girl in the Park

Writer-director David Auburn’s trauma-drama will ring bells with any parent who has lost a child even for a matter of minutes. That feeling of  panic is well suggested by Sigourney Weaver’s nightclub singer Julia Sandburg when, during a realistic and tense opening scene, her toddler Maggie disappears from Central Park. Cut to 16 years later: Julia, now separated and lonely chances upon Kate Bosworth’s unkempt teenage tearaway, Louise, and memories of her daughter come flooding back. When Louise moves in, Julia begins to enjoy life again. Yet she’s convinced there’s more to the youngster than meets the eye…

Essentially about loss, guilt and regret, Auburn’s film also examines Julia’s increasingly unhealthy obsession with her surrogate daughter, which gives it an air of uneasy tension that never amounts to much. Weaver and Bosworth provide decent interaction, but the ambiguous ending disappoints.