Babygirl (Macdara Vallely, 2012): USA

Reviewed by Mikael Myggen. Viewed at the Metro theater, Santa Barbara Film Festival

I’ve never really understood racially-targetted movies and TV shows. You can’t deny that certain movies are made for certain audiences and have inside jokes that only they will understand, a good example being Tyler Parry’s Medea movies. A white person will typically have a much different reaction than a black person will after seeing a movie like that. So why did I go to see Babygirl, a movie clearly not intended for white 20-something males like myself? I don’t know. The thing is, this movie might be good for it’s intended audience, but I honestly cannot tell given all the predispositions I have being the person that I am, and not having been raised in that culture. So I’m going to review this movie from the standpoint of a white 20-something male.

Babygirl‘s opening is slick and unexpected. The opening titles are presenting in a kind of comic-book style with bright colors and stylized drawings. I was hoping that maybe some of this style would carry into the rest of the movie, but I was wrong. The movie feels very plain afterwards, probably since they raised the bar so high within the first minute or two.

The story is about a young girl named Lena, who’s living in a crappy little apartment with her mom in the New York Bronx. Right away, I don’t like the setting. New York, especially Manhattan in which much of the movie takes place, is a totally overdone location for movies by now, and I’m just tired of seeing it being used for no real good reason. Besides that, Lena is one of the most boring protagonists I’ve ever seen in a movie. She doesn’t really have much to say, and  she spends most of the movie complaining about things and scowling at her mom for the obviously stupid decisions she’s making with her love life. Can’t say I blame her. Lena’s mom is basically an emotional train wreck, one minute madly in love with “the one”, and the next minute she’s crying over her love lost. She becomes romantically involved with a young man she meets on the bus, Viktor, the movie’s main antagonist who much of the movie’s conflict comes from. Lena, as far as I can tell, has a single friend, Daishawn, who’s an unlikeable bitch all the way through, but at least she’s somewhat different from Lena. Then lastly there’s Xavier, who’s probably the most likable person in the movie, but he doesn’t show up much until the end.

The writing for Babygirl can be absolutely grating at times. There’s a number of cliched sexual puns throughout the movie, such as one point where Daishawn says after she’s met an attractive guy, “it’s slammin’ hot today” There’s also a fair number of completely ridiculous scenes, such as one with Victor and Lena in a restaurant, and Victor is able to get alcohol for this obviously underaged girl by telling the waiter: “don’t worry, she’s cool” Another thing that bothers me about the writing is that it doesn’t really build up any of the characters, so there’s almost no real character progression. Victor is supposed to be a kind of a grey-area bad guy, and it seems like he gets a little bit worse as the movie goes on, but he never does anything crazy like killing someone, or burning a building down.

Another thing to note is that the camera this movie was shot with seems pretty crappy. Day scenes look alright, but things off in the distance look unintentionally blurry at times. Night scenes are noticeably worse, as there’s lots of camera grain in shots that don’t have good lighting. The establishing shots for locations seem like they’re trying to be artsy, but almost every single one of them come off as flat, uninspired and boring. At least the director took the time to film certain scenes during sestets to give them a warmer feel, though I’m not sure there’s any real reason for doing this other than aesthetic purposes.

All that being said, I could be wrong about everything. Babygirl is obviously a movie not made for the likes of me. If you’re into romantic dramas, Babygirl might be worth your time, but I’d rather just be insensitive and tell you to go see Batman: The Dark Knight Rises instead, because why not, that movie is awesome. This one isn’t.