Natalie Portman and Charlie Tahan in a scene from “The Other Woman.” (AP)
Shot a couple of years before “Black Swan” made Natalie Portman an Oscar front-runner, Don Roos’ “The Other Woman” is a small, flawed independent drama that might easily have gotten lost in the shuffle despite a compelling performance by the actress in the title role.
“The Other Woman,” which attracted little attention when it premiered at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival, has been a hot ticket through IFC’s video-on-demand program and is getting a well-deserved theatrical run beginning today at the IFC Center.
One satisfying aspect of movies can be witnessing an actor’s artistic growth.
It’s quite possible to watch Portman in this film as a young Manhattan newlywed struggling with her infant’s sudden death and see how this helped shape her later bravura turn as a ballerina who topples into madness in “Black Swan.”
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When we first meet Portman as Emilia, her unhappy 8-year-old stepson, William (Charlie Tahan), is urging her to sell the infant’s crib and stroller on eBay.
Emilia and William have an especially fraught relationship.
Her pregnancy — which is never meaningfully depicted — broke up his dad’s marriage to his mother Carolyne (Lisa Kudrow), a jealous, high-strung obstetrician who is not at all shy about criticizing what she perceives as Emilia’s lack of parental skills.
All of this has badly frayed Emilia’s marriage to her husband Jack (Scott Cohen), who has begun to wonder if Emilia pursued him at least partly to work out her tortured relationship with her father (Michael Cristofer), a philandering Westchester judge.
Based on the novel “Love and Other Impossible Pursuit” by Ayelet Waldman, Roos’ film (his credits include “Happy Endings”) doesn’t navigate its emotional shoals as smoothly as “Rabbit Hole,” another recent film about parental grief tingled with very dark humor.
Blandly acted by Cohen, Jack never manages to be much more of a cipher.
Carolyne, who verges on caricature, explodes when the troubled William fails to get into the Collegiate School.
And the character seriously strains credulity in the most contrived of a series of plot twists that must have worked better on the printed page.
Emilia is the only fully fleshed-out character in the movie.
Portman’s scenes with Tahan have a ring of rueful authenticity — especially when Emilia unwisely treats her lactose-intolerant stepson to a jumbo ice-cream sundae to test his mother’s warnings.
The film climaxes with the guilt-ridden Emilia, and others who have lost children, on a poignant “Walk of Remembrance” through Central Park.
Thanks to Portman’s superb work, we feel her pain acutely.
“The Other Woman” isn’t a perfect film, but it makes better use of her talents than her other current movie, “No Strings Attached.”
lou.lumenick@nypost.com