Filmmaker Nina Davenport has made a documentary of her decision to undergo insemination and become a single mother at age 41.
We see her dating history, her dinner parties, the state of her apartment’s plaster, her every doctor’s appointment.
By the time she tries to have a talk with her father, and he’s reluctant to lower his newspaper, the man appears more sympathetic than Davenport may realize. “First Comes Love” seems punishingly long. It’s no more visually arresting than anybody else’s home movies, and the film’s creator fails to connect her subset of Manhattan privilege to anyone or anything other than herself.
Davenport makes desultory attempts to bring in other mothers, but she is not an interviewer adept at drawing out scintillating observations. When visiting one friend with a new baby, Davenport gets the ball rolling with “What is your opinion overall on, you know, the single-mother thing?”
The director’s friends do seem uncommonly kind and understanding. A single gay friend consents to be the sperm donor. Another single friend, Amy, who doesn’t want kids, winds up as childbirth partner and always-on-call therapist. If “First Comes Love’’ (which begins airing Monday on HBO) has a heroine, Amy gets my vote.