‘What Maisie Knew” is set in contemporary Manhattan and adapted from an 1897 novel by Henry James, but for me it’s stuck somewhere in between: the 1970s, with all its earnest television about divorce being bad for children and other living things.
Told from the point of view of Maisie, a little girl (Onata Aprile) of about 6, it’s a routine drama with Julianne Moore playing (as we gradually discover) a rock star who makes Courtney Love look like Mom of the Year. Her common-law hubby (Steve Coogan) is an art dealer. We see (as Maisie does but the mom doesn’t) that Dad is having a lot of romantic dinners with the nanny (Joanna Vanderham).
Breakup, custody fight, Dad marries nanny, and Maisie gets passed along more times than a piece of macramé wall art at a re-gifting party. The gimmick is that we are stuck with Maisie’s field of perception: snippets of conversation as adults bustle in and out of rooms screaming at their lawyers on cellphones.
This is a fine idea for a PSA TV commercial, but (a) they already did it back in the ’70s and (b) it goes on well past the 30-second mark. And the soundtrack is so plaintive I kept waiting for the announcer to come in with the hard sell about why I should buy life insurance or join the Lutheran church.