Nasty Baby

Greetings again from the darkness. Many indie films receive positive responses during a film festival run because most festival goers are frequent movie watchers, and really appreciate the unique and brave approach taken by the rebellious and up-and-coming filmmakers. Writer/director Sebastian Silva lulls us into the comfort zone of a "friends" story and then stuns us with a third act that could seem out-of-the-blue, if one weren't paying close attention along the way.

Mr. Silva also stars as Freddy, a media artist who is working on a video project (entitled Nasty Baby) that features himself (and others) imitating infants. He lives in Brooklyn with his boyfriend Mo, played by TV on the Radio's Tunde Adebimpe (so good in Rachel Getting Married, 2008). They are part of a trio of friends completed by Polly (Kristen Wiig), who is addressing her biological clock by relentlessly pursuing artificial insemination from her two friends.

While it's easy as a viewer to get complacent watching the interactions of these three mostly likable people in various elements: together, separately, at work, with other acquaintances, and especially with neighbors; the script offers many subtle hints along the way about the make-up of each.

The supporting cast is excellent and includes Reg E Cathey ("House of Cards") as a mentally-shaky neighbor, Mark Margolis ("Breaking Bad") as a more level-headed neighbor, Alia Shawkat (underutilized here, but very talented) as Freddy's assistant, and Neal Huff as the eccentric gallery owner.

Normal seems like a pretty straightforward term, but the film shows that normal really doesn't exist, since it's always changing. The relationship of this trio of friends, their plan for child-rearing, and the family dinner at Mo's parent's home … all examples of how normal has shifted. And to top it off, the film's third act can't be considered normal by any standard of story-telling, and you will question how you missed the true character of the main players … and maybe even how you would react, if you found yourself in this spot. If nothing else, the film might make you a bit more tolerant of your annoying neighbor that has caused you so many negative thoughts over the years.

Chilean director Sebastián Silva's Sundance premiered sixth feature NASTY BABY is an oddity in queer cinema, it ostensibly starts to tackle with a topical issue of gay couples, after homosexuality has been reckoned more or less as a normalcy in America, - parenthood, but rounds off with a shark-jumping bang. Freddy (director Silva himself) is an European immigrant, from Spain, one divines, he is a performance artist lives in New York with his black boyfriend Mo (Adebimpe, leading singer from TV on the Radio). Freddy and his bestie Polly (Wiig) are both broody: Freddy is caught up in his new project named "Nasty Baby" which involves adults imitating baby behaviours, it is absolutely nonsensical both on paper and in its eventual form, while Polly, at one point is joked by Freddy as a"semen vampire", she is not young anymore, so timing is also crucial for her whether she could ever become a mother. Naturally, they decide to having a baby together, only to their dismay that Freddy's sperm count is too low. So Freddy is egged to persuade Mo as the sperm donor, and the latter eventually caves in.

Meanwhile, a mentally impaired vagrant Bishop (Cathey) lives nearby begins to wrack the trio firstly by leaf-blowing in every early morning across the street of Freddy and Mo's apartment, then physically pestering Polly several times and constantly hurling homophobic abuse at them, anyway he is cuckoo, and Silva ascertains that the aversion to Bishop is plain vicarious.

Time goes by until a mood-shifting third act happens on the day when Polly phones Freddy that she is not pregnant with Mo's semen whereas the truth is otherwise, she only wants to give him a surprise later to cheer him up after knowing Freddy's Nasty Baby is cold-shouldered by the gallery owner initially shows interest but backtracks. On his way to his apartment, a tetchy and smouldering Freddy encounters Bishop again, and this time, there will be blood! The film changes its gear bluntly from a blanched mumblecore to a noirish thriller saturated with consternation and fumbles (a hallmark deer-in-the-headlight will arrive later as an over-obvious metaphor). It is a wayward move notwithstanding, but what Silva brings home to audience is the elemental homicidal urge resides in those carefree hipsters, whom we are half-heartedly rooting for until that crunch. The trio is going to become parents of a mixed race baby, but a callous truth is that not only they have no instinct to save one when they can, they also unanimously chooses the other way around, on a deceitful ground that man is a scourge, despicable and expendable, yet, he is still an egalitarian human being, when bringing a new life into this world and extinguishing an old one (assumably with the same skin color) has been juxtaposed in that fashion, it electrifies viewers to jump on that cynical old question: how can we keep our inner demon at bay and raise a child free of such contamination? That's my takeaway of this unorthodox indie fare when being steeped in the catchy closing-credits anthem: Ida Corr and Fedde Le Grand's LET ME THINK ABOUT IT. There is some food for thought left, but also one cannot help feeling being short-changed.

Films are like visiting a city. Mainstream movies cover the big attraction: Eiffel Tower, Notre-Dame Cathedra, and Musée du Louvre. Indie films take you through the back streets and occasionally you get a tour of the underbelly of a city. "Nasty Baby" by filmmaker Sebastián Silva takes you on a back ally tour of the character of ordinary people. We all like to think we know what we will do in hypothetical situations. The truth is often we don't. This movie starts off pleasant enough with likable, real character; but from the start there is a slow burn that is building towards some unwanted destination. This movie takes you around the big attractions of a city and delivers you via the characters in places you would never expect to visit or would want to go. Check out "Nasty Baby" if you get a chance.

Personally I'm at a loss for words to write about this movie. I love Sebastián Silva film's but this one left me a bit empty and confused. I have no doubt there is a serious message flowing throughout this story but this time it went right over my head.

The central character is Freddy. He's an artist and this story is about him preparing to film or rather video his entry to an art exhibition. His art project is to record himself dressed and acting like an infant, a baby in diapers! Throughout this story there is an elderly man who taunts, harasses, and belittles Freddy because Freddy is gay. Freddy and boyfriend Mo ignore this hatred coming from this man. Freddy and Mo get on with their lives. Then one evening the hate filled neighbor follows Freddy while walking home. The hate filled man continues his harassment of Freddy and Freddy has had his fill of this grotesque man and strikes back.

At this point the story suddenly changes. It becomes dark and fearful and almost neutralizes the previous hour or so of story. I wondered what is Sebastián Silva doing to this mostly benign story. I will not describe what happens because the viewer must determine what the statement is for themselves. For me this movie is about innocents. Freddy as an artist is innocent in his creative quest, the baby is innocents. Freddy & Mo just want to live their lives and not cross the paths of others. The elderly hate filled man is the world once innocents is abandoned. Freddy is forced to abandon his innocents by the hate filled man who represents society in which innocents tries to survive.

At movies end we see Freddy and friends are admiring an infant in a stroller. Here we see the same movements and sounds that Freddy created for his art project as a baby in diapers. We are left wondering what is the future for this real little infant. At what points will it's innocents be forced out of him as it was forced out of Freddy.

Nobody can say writer/director/actor Sebastián Silva lacks creativity and ingenuity as a young filmmaker. His film Crystal Fairy & The Magical Cactus, while being frustratingly quirky and an overall unpleasant experience for me years back, did show that Silva had a talent for concocting pretty bizarre scenarios with an ethereal vibe in their cinematography. Silva's latest directorial effort, Nasty Baby, comes very close in giving off the same kind of young, upstart filmmaking tendencies of Jay and Mark Duplass, but it's a film that gets bogged down by a serious sense of misguided direction in its third act that almost makes the film's pillars collapse under the weight of its incredulity.

Spoiling the film would be criminal, so expect me to dance around the events with great detail. The story revolves around a European immigrant named Freddy (played by Silva, who also wrote the film, as well) and Mo (Tunde Adebimpe), a gay couple who are trying to have a child of their own and enlist in the help of Polly (Kristen Wiig) to be their surrogate mother. This wouldn't be such a chore, but due to Freddy's low sperm count, his numerous attempts to impregnate Polly have resulted in nothing but frustration. Freddy is also a prolific actor and starving artist, and his latest project is a short film titled "Nasty Baby," which will show him portraying a screaming infant (just when I thought Mark Duplass's role in Creep that had him making a video for his unborn son to enjoy was the peak of strange).

The bane of the trio's existence comes in the form of a mentally ill neighbor they know as "The Bishop" (Reg E. Cathey). Despite their acts of kindness, "The Bishop" continuously bothers them with his erratic and unpredictable behavior, going as far as almost sexually assaulting Polly in broad daylight. "The Bishop," while initially seeming like a petty character in the lives of these three, consistently finds himself being a common problem as they try to go about their daily lives unbothered, especially given the stressful circumstances they're currently facing.

Nasty Baby is a film that works largely because it's free-form and unwilling to conform to a discernible plot for much of its runtime. It admirably rejects form, and that makes it easy to believe that this is a film about three realistic characters that are simply going about their days. The vibes the film gives are so natural and nuanced that even the quirkiness of Freddy making a video of him acting infantile is a believable inclusion, despite its most illogical entrance into whatever remnants of a plot this film bears.

Nasty Baby's issue comes when it decides to introduce a plot - a considerably dark and sad one, at that - late in its third act. It's as if, in that very moment in his screen writing, Silva forgot to really introduce a bigger, more identifiable conflict for his characters, and as a result, the final twenty minutes of the film feel very forced and rushed in attempting to introduce, remedy, and eventually solve the newly introduced problem for their characters. Had Silva stopped dawdling with the screenplay and introduced this conflict earlier, maybe at the fifty-minute mark, this film could've been the best of both worlds - a largely free-form exercise in indie, LGBT filmmaking, in addition to a compelling black comedy/drama.

Instead, this feels like a film that doesn't really find its very real problem or identity until it's too late to really leave a meaningful impact. The overall effect of introducing such a huge and potentially life-altering situation to the characters with only about twenty minutes left in the film not only is unfair to the film's characters, but the audience members, who will undoubtedly emerge feeling a sense of disconnectedness and discomfort thanks to a film showcasing such a monumental event before solving it and cleaning it up like it was nothing at all.

With all that in mind, Nasty Baby is just sporadically funny enough to be deemed a comedy, and wisely punctuated by enough sadder or more dramatic moments to also fittingly earn the title of a drama. Silva's quirky narrative, for the most part, doesn't get the best of him, and the trio of performances from the main cast is particularly strong, with the standout being Wiig in another performance that needs just the right amount of eccentricity and humanity to make it work (see Adventureland and The Skeleton Twins for her other strong performances at playing smart, if disconnected). This is a film that works marginally well for the most part of its runtime, teetering on the edge of silliness and sophistication until the point where it reaches its climactic arc, which should've been its second major conflict throughout. At that point, we see that Silva has been piloting a ship that he knows how to operate but doesn't really know how to steer and doesn't find out until the ship has sailed well past it's destination.

Starring: Sebastián Silva, Tunde Adbimpe, Kristen Wiig, and Reg E. Cathey. Directed by: Sebastián Silva.