‘Baby’ Review: Marcelo Caetano’s Underdeveloped Queer Coming of Age Story Never Fully Blooms | Chicago International Film Festival

The queer coming-of-age story has seemingly taken over the LGBT film landscape. Nearly every film festival presents a small handful of movies that focus on young queer people and their often-harrowing journey of self-discovery on the way to adulthood. And while their mere existence serves as a welcome deviation from the otherwise overwhelmingly heterosexual cinematic world, too often these films find themselves repeating the same story beats and exploring similar themes. Baby is no exception. Following the titular 18-year-old as he stumbles through a rushed, forced ascension into self-sufficiency, Marcelo Caetano’s film never allows the audience to truly get to know Baby, despite him being at the center of nearly every frame.

Before he adopts his hustler name, Baby (João Pedro Mariano) is known as Wellington. As the film opens, we find him being abandoned on the streets of São Paulo, Brazil after spending two years locked up at a youth detention center. While he was there he turned 18, and upon his release he finds that his parents left their home with no clue as to their current location. With nowhere to turn, Wellington takes to sleeping on the streets and spending time with his group of fun, troublemaking friends. One night, they invade a porno theater and use their shadowed sexual fumblings to steal phones. Baby doesn’t take part in the thievery, instead sizing up the handsome men who line the walls of the theater, looking for companionship. One of them is Ronaldo (Ricardo Teodoro), a beautiful older sex worker who at first brushes off the penniless Wellington. Later, the two reconnect and their mutual attraction is immediate. Ronaldo teaches Wellington the ways of the street, mentoring him in both the escort scene and as a drug peddler, all while bonding across their generational divide.

The exploration of the two decades-plus age difference between the two men is the film’s greatest achievement. Ronaldo introduces himself by bragging about his appearance and desirability in the way that most teenagers do. He also leads a life that appears put together on the surface but is supported by an unsteady foundation of sketchy drug deals. This type of delayed development or prolonged adolescent mindset is a phenomenon amongst gay men in particular, many of whom don’t get to have the type of messy, unstructured youths that their straight companions do. Baby never puts too fine a point on this – in fact, it’s a separate character outside of the Baby-Ronaldo pairing who makes an observation about the younger queer generation having an easier time coming out and being accepted by society than those older than them. And while that may be true, Baby shows that the kids are far from alright. Many are still disenfranchised by the world or shunned by their family, and turn to alternative methods of survival. Still, what Baby does best is show that both members of the central romantic couple have something to learn from each other. In the film’s best sequence, Wellington shows the much more typically masculine Ronaldo some simple vogue-style dance moves, which Ronaldo adorably attempts to stiffly recreate. The men are shirtless and standing on a rooftop, somehow both completely open to their surroundings and yet sequestered in their own safe world.

Ronaldo is a captivating character, full of fascinating contradictions (despite his chosen profession, he’s shown to be occasionally jealous of the men with whom Baby interacts). Teodoro brings him to life with an underplayed charm that leaps off the screen from his first appearance. He’s sexy and confident, but unafraid to be tender and caring. His first instinct upon hearing about Wellington’s rough life is to hold him and make him feel safe, despite them both being undressed in bed. He’s easy to sympathize with, but the film never looks at him with condescension. Unfortunately, his on-screen companion isn’t afforded the same depth. Wellington/Baby is a strangely underexplored character. He spends more time talking about his short-term goals (find his parents, make some money, etc.) than his long-term hopes. Of course, this young character is still figuring his own self out, so it’s understandable that he may not have a full grasp on all aspects of his life, but plenty of youthful characters throughout history prove to be compelling despite, or even because of, their lack of inner clarity. Mariano has a decent enough screen presence to somewhat make up for the writing’s shortcomings, but he also fades into the background of too many scenes.

Smartly, the film uses a removed, voyeuristic camera style to capture characters who must both put themselves on display and hide in society’s shadows (at one point, Ronaldo enigmatically proclaims “Mysteries are solved in the dark”). Scenes with Wellington’s flamboyant group of friends are occasionally shot from afar, as if the audience is a passer-by on the street. Similarly, an important sex scene between Wellington and Ronaldo has the pair undressing off-camera, only slightly visible in a reflection. Instead, the camera focuses on the client, a self-proclaimed voyeur who seemingly only wants to watch them. And the aforementioned dance instruction scene takes place on a roof, with the camera zooming in and out as if it’s struggling to capture an authentic moment from the best position. All of these choices contribute to the feeling that the film is looking at its characters from a greater distance than the intimate story might suggest, inferring that Baby is saying something bigger about society.

Still, the story itself is disappointingly standard for this type of film, and rather aimless in its approach. Nearly all of its greatest achievements come from an audience’s interpretation rather than the film’s own messaging. Of course, any thematic heft is still laudable, but Baby doesn’t do enough of a deep dive into itself, instead relying on inference and the actors to do the heavy lifting that the screenplay has otherwise shirked. Like its main character, Baby isn’t fully-formed. All teenagers go through a period of mistakenly thinking their experience is totally original and singular, and that their struggles are new – in that way, this film is a good reflection of its central character’s youthful mindset.

Grade: C+

This review is from the 2024 Chicago International Film Festival. Baby will be released in the U.S. by Dark Star Pictures and Uncork’d Entertainment after concluding its multiple festival run.