Like Dandelion Dust

Jon Gunn's Like Dandelion Dust is a quietly, cunningly affecting film about the battle between birth and adoptive parents over a 6-year-old boy. Both sets of parents -- Mira Sorvino and Barry Pepper as the "birthers" and Cole Hauser and Kate Levering as the adopters who've been the only parents the boy has known ~ are raggedly desperate because of their personal weakness but supremely loving of the boy, Joey, played by Maxwell Perry Cotton. Gunn directs both Sorvino and Pepper, the decidedly lower-middle class couple who are victims of their own poor choices, in deeply moving performances that are played almost entirely on their faces. Hauser and Levering ~ whose wealth sets them apart but not altogether positively from the birth parents ~ are also wonderful in this refreshingly intimate and memorable film.