"Holy Lola" is not a French version last year's adoption movie "Casa de los babys" by John Sayles, but it does cover some of the similar frustrations that all parents trying to adopt outside the USA have to face.
While 'Casa' dealt with adoption South of the border and how rich American mothers would wait in luxurious accommodations for their future offspring to be awarded to them from the depths of poverty, "Holy Lola" examines the culture of Cambodia and the great need of an entire country whose only real export is the orphaned children created from the wars with the Khmer Rouge.
Director Bertrand Tavernier ("Round Midnight") puts the audience into the scenes with a lot of hand-held camera-work and extremely natural performances by its two lead actors. Cambodia is much hotter than France and naturally when the married couple is alone they spend a lot of time in the nude, especially the wife.
Finding the right child is a humiliating process and any group of children playing suddenly becomes a 'shopping zone' for prospective parents to start wheeling and dealing with the local brokers and the endless bribes that have to be negotiated to get the necessary paperwork to leave the country.
Watchable and informative, but not necessarily entertaining with very little humor (except a smiling baby from time to time).
