Fest Track On Sirk TV Film Review: BABY DON’T CRY [New Orleans Film Festival 2021 - Virtual]
The aspect of an outsider looking to belong is an undeniable truth. The question becomes one of influence but also of connection. In "Baby Don't Cry", Zita Bai, herself an immigrant from China, takes on an interesting diametric approach using both realistic and heightened elements to approach a story of self that is both affecting and yet disconnective. Baby lives with an abusive mother with obvious mental problems outside Seattle. As a character Baby is growing into a young woman dealing with both physical changes and impulses as well as a character specific morbid sense of life as she chronicles different aspects of decay whether it be dead rats or still life. She wants to be a filmmaker and yet doesn't seem to have any drive beyond her immediate whims. She has no friends and those who see her just make fun...even a criminal boy named Fox she befriends and starts to slightly fall for doesn't seem to know his own emotions and wants.
The gang of people that surrounds this story are inherently scuzzy so sometimes it is hard wracking up any degree of empathy for them but it is a perception of a certain life all too normal. Baby wants love so bad that she is willing to put up with levels of abuse and cruelty. She emulates her would-be boyfriend and his sister even though they often put her in the path of destruction. Bai as Baby is building the aspect of mimicry as metaphor by emulating those closest to her. This reasoning of Baby can reflect in that she is simply so lonely that this is her only course of action. The film plays very verite but sometimes it is hard to read the arch of what the film is trying to say. At certain points Bai with lead actor Vas Provotakas has some moments of primal empathy (when she wraps his arms around him or shaves his head) but those moments of reflection don't quite adjust to the overall structure. Baby will always be let down by life and yet her path is her own to choose, either by circumstance or fate. "Baby Don't Cry" is an interesting metaphor on existance where the end game is anything but certain. C
By Tim Wassberg
