Berlin

Mammoth

Sweden - Germany - Denmark

Comparable in many ways to Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s “Babel,” the pic intercuts three stories, set variously in the U.S., the Philippines and Thailand, each involving working parents who regret they can’t spend more time with their offspring. However, the shallow, mega-wealthy, entitled American characters can afford top-of-the-line replacement child care in their deluxe Soho loft, in contrast to single-mother protags such as the Filipino nanny and the Thai sex worker, who struggle far from home to build a better life for their loved ones.

In what is probably its biggest mistake in terms of creating audience identification and emotional involvement, the pic posits a mostly unsympathetic New York couple as its central characters. Restless emergency-room surgeon Ellen (Michelle Williams) and bored millionaire Internet game designer Leo (Gael Garcia Bernal) are mostly absentee parents to cheerful 7-year-old Jackie (Sophie Nyweide). But Jackie is cared for around the clock by loving, live-in Filipino caregiver Gloria (glowing Marife Necesito).

Jackie is fond of her nanny, and so Gloria must contend with Ellen’s obvious jealousy as well as the guilt trips laid on by her young sons, Salvador (Jan Nicdao), 10, and Manuel (Martin Delos Santos), 7, whose plaintive phone calls from Manila reduce her to tears. One of the pic’s strongest sections involves Gloria’s mother (Maria del Carmen) showing Salvador his life isn’t so tough, unwittingly precipitating a disaster that brings Gloria home sooner than planned.

When Leo travels to Thailand (on a private jet, natch) with sleazy business partner Bob (“The Visitor” helmer Tom McCarthy), he meets the pic’s third working mother, sexy bargirl Cookie (gorgeous Run Srinikornchot), whose energy lights up the screen. However, the Thai scenes further the feeling that Garcia Bernal’s idiot-savant character comes from some completely different movie.

Garcia Bernal and Williams look great but can’t overcome their superficial characterizations and bland lines. The foreign supporting cast (whose scenes are shot mostly in Tagalog and Thai) also look good and rate higher on the likability and credibility scales.

Expressively composed visuals, shot in sharp widescreen by Danish lenser Marcel Zyskind, are more telling than the vapid dialogue in Moodysson’s screenplay. Pic is filled with ironic moments -- from the “Made in the Philippines” basketball Gloria buys in New York to send back to her boys to Leo standing at the window of his luxury Bangkok hotel, looking out on the polluted haze while sucking on personal oxygen -- but overall, the pic never builds to a satisfying, explicit reckoning with its ambitious themes.

Glossy tech package is top-notch, with regular Moodysson collaborators taking editing, music and production design duties.

Camera (color, widescreen), Marcel Zyskind; editor, Michal Leszczylowski; music, Jesper Kurlandsky, Erik Holmquist, Linus Gierta; production designer, Josefin Asberg; costume designer, Denise Ostholm; sound (Dolby SRD/DTS), Hans Moller. Reviewed at the Berlin Film Festival (competing), Feb. 8, 2009. Running time: 125 MIN.