Sherrybaby

It's obvious, but it needs to be said: Maggie, baby. If ever there was a reason to see Laurie Collyer's earnest indie film Sherrybaby, it's Maggie Gyllenhaal's performance. Gyllenhaal stars in the title role of Sherry Swanson, a recovering heroin addict, who after three years in prison, returns home to restart her life and reclaim the young daughter she left behind.

Actors are often praised (and given Oscars) for unfortunate physical transformations. Glamorous Charlize Theron mottled her good looks and gained weight to play a lesbian serial killer in Monster. Adrien Brody shed thirty pounds from his already thin frame to portray a Holocaust survivor in The Pianist. Nicole Kidman wore a fake nose to become Virginia Woolf in The Hours. Whereas Gyllenhaal, in an almost chameleon-like performance, changes skins. Her beauty is not diminished; instead she becomes this other person--no prosthetics required.

The articulate, Columbia educated actress morphs into Sherry, a former stripper who wears low-cut tank tops and impossibly tight jeans, and talks like a working class Jersey girl. (If you are looking for maximum contrast, check out Gyllenhaal's performance as a cut-throat Manhattan cake maker in Great New Wonderful.) On more than one occasion, Gyllenhaal sheds her cheap clothes in Sherrybaby, but the nudity is never exploitative. Sherry simply uses her sex appeal to get what she needs: to receive pleasure after her release from jail, to get a job at a day care center.

Collyer's film provides gritty details of an ex-convict's struggle to reintegrate into society. She takes Gyllenhaal into the half-way house that gives ex-prisoners shelter, into invasive sessions with her parole officer, and reveals the enormous disconnect with middle-class America: a world Sherry dropped out of. The story of Sherrybaby is simple enough; Gyllenhaal's moving performance offers enormous complexity.