Nasty Baby

Freddy (Sebastián Silva) and Mo (Tunde Adebimpe) are a gay couple in NYC. They're trying to have a baby with friend Polly (Kristen Wiig). Freddy discovers that he has low sperm count. Mo is reluctant to contribute. Freddy is a performing artist making a short of adults acting like babies. The group gets harassed by local homophobic unstable Bishop (Reg E. Cathey).

This is a rambling indie at first. The starts as a low-budget mumbling gay lifestyle artsy New York indie. It sprinkles in some darker tones and then it takes a completely different dark turn. It's intriguing although it doesn't completely work.

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.

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.

Pretty lousy for the most part, though it does arrive at a compelling (if not original) conclusion. Director Sebastian Silva stars along with Tunde Adebimpe as a gay couple in New York City who are thinking about having a baby with their best friend, Kristen Wiig. Not much really happens plotwise for the first hour or so, though a conflict arises between the trio and a mentally unhinged, homophobic man who lives in their neighborhood (Reg E. Cathey). He often follows Wiig around in a threatening manner, and likes to throw homophobic slurs at Silva and Adebimpe as they walk down the street. Alia Shawkat (who co-produced! How desperate do you have to be to hit Alia Shawkat up for money?) and Mark Margolis also co-star.

This film really had an impact on me. I'm not sure this was in the way the filmmakers intended though, as it was a very mixed experience.

I was immediately drawn in by the "indy" vibe, if that's what you call it. The naturalistic acting was appealing and seemed, for the most part, to ring true. The way the actors moved and conversed was convicing, so perhaps it was improvised to an extent? I thought the two main male actors did exceptionally well and I'd be curious to see them in other work. (Obviously I know Kristen Wiig already, and she is so good!) I liked the tone that was set and I felt more and more connected to the characters and story as it went along. But, as others have mentioned, when the film takes an abrupt turn, I just stopped believing it. Not the premise of this event or how it is dealt with initially, or how it is shown (I appreciate the graphic portrayal of it) but how the challenge is dealt with afterwards, and everything that follows, including the closing credits. The realism stopped there, and I felt ripped off and pissed off. It was like they took two completely different plots and mashed them together, and I really want to know how things would have turned out without the abrupt turn. I would like to understand the whys and hows of the filmmaker's decisions. Was there a message? Did the filmmaker intend to upset his audience? What was the point of this whole thing? And, that said, I still think it's a good piece of film-making, which perhaps explains why I can't just let this go and dismiss this as a piece of crap.