'Nasty Baby' AKA 'What is it like to live in Brooklyn with friends who will do anything
★★★★★ (A must watch if you love New York, Hitchcock and anything LGBTQ)
It was a quiet Sunday afternoon in October and although Halloween was in the air, we were enjoying a perfectly pleasant outdoor brunch, when my friend Owen proposed that we go and see “Nasty Baby” at the IFC, introducing it simply as 'a gay film with Kirsten Wiig'. In retrospective that sounds a little diminutive because this film was much more than that!
'Nasty Baby' is the 6th feature written and directed by Sebastiàn Silva, the young and talented Chilean cineaste, auteur of the amazing ‘The Maid’. I loved that film and I was exited to see what Sebastian Silva has been cooking since then.
The premise is quite straight forward: Freddy and Mo, respectively played by Silva himself and Tunde Adebimpe, are a gay couple living in Brooklyn (the film was shot in Silva’s apartment apparently) who are trying to help their friend Polly (Kirsten Wiig) to conceive a baby. Obviously things don't go as planned and with a creepy twist this film is sure to entertain you with humor and with a healthy dose of tension and shock...
But Silva is not happy by simply presenting an engaging story with likable characters, nope, somehow he also manages to undermine the way we perceive Queerness and he is quite subversive at that too. The film doesn’t try to explain or justify why gay people exists and if they should be allowed to father children, these are simply presented as facts of life, against which the plot is projected.
“Nasty Baby" is not trying to say "Hey, look, gay couples are here to stay and they too have the right to father children" rather, the message is "These guys are doing this and that and they just happen to be gay, because life is like this anyway, so shut up and enjoy the film". I applaud Silva for having normalized the non-issue.
But the merits of the film don’t stop here.
We all know how American cinema likes to divide the baddies from the goodies in clearly labeled boxes but Silva seems more interested in challenging this template …
### Spoiler Alert !!! Begins ###
… If you have seen the film, you do know that these people deserve to go to jail for murder and accessory to murder. We are talking about a pretty brutal homicide here and the stark contrast between that sequences and the light tone of the film this far makes for a truly grim and unexpected experience. The scene was cringe worthy and the performances gritty and realistic.
You can justify them as you wish: maybe it was an accident, or maybe Bishop, played by a Reg E. Cathey, just ‘had it coming’. In any case, traditionally we should either see them brought to justice or else they must redeem themselves by an act of contrition … but they don’t! The happy-ever-after ending is grated to them, as they get away scot-free rollersaking with the joy of the innocents. Silva manages to subvert some of the basic rules of American cinema here, and I can only admire him more for doing so.
### Spoiler Alert !!! Ends ###
'Nasty Baby' presents some remarkably enjoyable performances. The rapport between Wiig, Silva and Adebimpe is a pleasure to watch and a large part of the film relies on this. It wasn’t completely surprising then when I find out that most of it was improvised! Silva did a pretty good job at directing this wild bunch and wrangling their freestyling into a cohesive and thoroughly solid story telling. Sometimes films become victims of ‘imporv’ because performance takes priority over storytelling and the film becomes ‘slow’ and ‘cerebral’. But Silva and co. managed to deliver a truly compelling story with the true-to-life joy of improvised dialogues.
In my opinion that takes balls and dexterity.
In fact this is an excellent cast: from Reg E. Cathey (House of Cards) and Mark Margolis (Pi, Black Swan, Requiem For a Dream and basically every Darren Aronofsky's film out there) to the lovely Alia Shawkat (Arrested Development, Whip It, Broad City) and Tunde Adebimpe. They all shine under the masterful direction of Sebastiàn Silva.
All in all I am very happy I managed to see 'Nasty Baby' at the IFC, here in New York City. I am sure these days most independent films gets most of their views on services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime and Mubi. But there is something special in knowing that you are personally and directly supporting talented filmmakers while watching their films on the big screen.
So if you're lucky enough to live in one of the cities where 'Nasty Baby' is showing please go and show your support! I will be tuning my antennas to see what Sebastian Silva will be cooking up next!
Yours Truly, Gabriele
