Baby Blues (Katarzyna Rosłaniec, 2012): Poland

Reviewed by Belen Nevarez. Viewed at AFI Film Festival 2013.

This is no ordinary teen mom movie!

Baby Blues is a film directed by Katarzyna Rosłaniec, follows a young girl and her newborn baby struggling to have a normal life, though being a rowdy and colorful teenager gets in the way at times which results in a tragic accident we did not expect.  We start off feeling bad for her as her baby daddy is a bit immature but tries to care. She comes off as attention needy yet spunky, but we do like her. Throughout the film, the scenes are visually colorful and the fashion corresponds to their personalities. The teen mom, Natalia (Magdalena Berus) seems to enjoy wearing polka dots, fashion forward colors, and sassy shoes. This creates a film where you want to look all around the scene to see what colors you can pick up from the lighting they chose. Darker scenes had more blues and blacks and created an unsafe feel. To be warned, this film does contain nudity and implied sex scenes, which I was not expecting. This is a film where they truly have sex, drugs, and some form of music. For example, there was a party scene in which the music was full of base and was felt throughout the theater. I almost wanted to start dancing with them! Though I definitely did not want to join in on the cocaine and joint group sessions.

I would very much recommend this film! It is so different then what is out today, you got twists and turns, emotions going up and down, though not much of a humorous film, you will have all smiles. This film to me is inspiring as this is some of the actor’s first film and did such a good job at portraying their characters. These types of characters are unique and you can tell they took time to fully understand who they are supposed to be. Though I felt bad for the baby as the deserved a well suited mother, its a story you must watch!