A DI Dad's Movie Review: "And Then Came Love"

no. 391

This past weekend I saw with my wife the new Vanessa Williams movie where her character, Julie, is a choice mom via DI and she tracks the donor down. I don't want to give too much of the plot away ( I have actually done so quite extensively in previous posts about the movie) as I do think it is a movie worth seeing.

There are a few weak points in the donor side of the story (based on my knowledge) but overall I thought it was handled responsibly and put the issue in the public eye with some honest feelings behind it.

Two issues jumped out at me. (1) The donor indicates to Julie when they first meet that while in college he donated his sperm for the money (generally the case) but that he then decided against continuing and that he donated only the one time. From what I know donors who do not continue giving would not be offered generally on the open market. And you would think that the first batch donated would also be lost to testing for diseases etc in addition to various blood tests. (2) When Julie reads the donor profile out loud at one point she mentions the college where the donor was attending. While I know some programs openly market as having donors from XYZ college I still think it is rare and it was a loose end in my mind.

The most interesting donor conception tidbit in the movie I noted was from watching how they portrayed the donor conceived child. I was interested as it became clear that from the child's perspective he obviously was aware that he had no dad but it appeared clear to me that the "disclosure" discussion between mother and son never went farther than it was only "a mommy and son family". Seeing this in person in the NYC playgrounds and then here on screen made it clear to me that even in these households it is hard to easily explain these things and life passes quickly so even parents who intend to disclose and feel it is obvious don't always have the disclosure discussion as early as they would hope. Yes the child was only tops 6 or 7 so even if the mom did tell him the odds are the kid would not get it.

But back to the movie. The casting was great. Seeing Eartha Kitt as Vanessa's mom was perfect. Kevin Daniels as the donor was a good choice.

It is playing through only this Friday in NYC after that in limited run around the country. check out their website for dates, places amd times. [www.andthencamelove.com] As I said overall a cute fun movie while addressing some of the seriousness of the issue. This is not another "Made in America" and is worth seeing.

After the movie there was a short Q&A with Caytha Jentiss the movie's writer / producer and the two leads. At this I thanked herfor her writing and for responsibly putting forward an image of a DI mom and child family.