John Sayles (Limbo, Sunshine State) is a director who avoids the neat, easy solutions of mainstream cinema. He comes at difficult subjects with both a compassionate and critical eye, and his stories, sometimes frustratingly, do not have neat endings.

In his latest film, Casa De Los Babys, Sayles explores the uneasy reciprocal relationship between privileged white Americans and underprivileged hispanic cultures in the baby adoption business.

Six affluent white American women wait in an anonymous Latin American town for their adoption papers to be processed by the government. The hotel they are staying at is nicknamed the "Casa de Los Babys" because of the stream of expectant American foster mothers that passes through it.

Together this group of women form a deep well of frustrated motherhood while individually each carries the burden of a deeper personal suffering stemming from their inability to have children themselves: Skipper (Daryl Hannah), an insular fitness fanatic, Eileen (Susan Lynch), an Irish immigrant with romantic ideals of motherhood, Leslie (Lili Taylor), a single New Yorker who has no time for men, Gayle (Mary Steenbergen), a recovering alcoholic, Jennifer (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a wealthy, but bullied wife, and Nan (excellently played by Marcia Gray), a demanding meanie who behaves like the obnoxious American from the moment that we meet her berating the waiter on the hotel terrace.

Sayles gradually explores each of the characters' past sadness and future hopes as they pass the time as tourists in the local town. He also swings 180 degrees to give us the point of view of locals: the business-like hotel-owner Senora Munoz, her son who thinks all Americans are exploitative imperialists, the lawyer who refuses to be bribed, and the glue-sniffing street children who everybody neglects.

With such a large ensemble, the 95 minutes offers little time other than to sketch the various lives of these characters and there is a sense that they have been prised into the overall thesis.

Yet, Sayles still manages to speaks volumes in powerful emotional scenes like, for example, when a maid Asunción (movingly played by Vanessa Martinez), who gave up her baby for adoption, and the expectant Gayle, tearfully communicate in their own languages about their very different experiences. It is a moment of catharsis and hope.

It's also so refreshing to have such a multiplicity of different views on a subject that few other directors would find filmworthy.