Marcelo Caetano’s Baby (in cinemas in UK and Ireland from 12th December)
Peccadillo Pictures
BABY
(Brazil/ France/ Netherlands, 105 mins)
Directed by Marcelo Caetano
Starring João Pedro Mariano, Ricardo Teodoro and Ana Flavia Cavalcanti
THEATRICAL RELEASE (UK AND IRELAND): 12th DECEMBER
STREAMING PLATFORMS FROM 22nd DECEMBER
Available On Demand from BFI Player, Curzon Home Cinema and Peccadillo
After being released from a juvenile detention centre, 18-year-old Wellington (Baby) finds himself alone and adrift on the streets of São Paulo, without any contact from his parents and lacking the resources to rebuild his life. At a porn cinema he encounters Ronaldo, a mature sex worker, who teaches him new ways of surviving. Gradually, their working relationship becomes a tumultuous passion.
Baby is the multi-award winning feature from Marcelo Caetano, the director of Body Electric and TV series Notícias Populares.
Director’s statement
In BABY, the characters are in constant movement, physically and emotionally. They cross the city streets looking for freedom and trying to survive, fleeing from misery and their haunted pasts. The camera walks beside them, watches them from the top of a building and zooms in to single them out from the crowd. The characters dance in the chaos of the city and the camera dances with them.
During the shoot, we had a simple rule of mise-en-scene: something has to be in movement, whether it is the camera, the background, or the actors. Movement brings us closer to characters’ complexity and their constant adaptation in a life full of unpredictable situations. In our current cultural moment, when we try to fix people in a single identity, I like characters and inter- personal relationships that challenge us to suspend our categorisations.
The connection between Baby and Ronaldo is hard to define. I can read them as “partners in crime”, but also as a conflictual passion; protective but also exploitative. Their relationship changes during the film and they are fighting to understand who they are in this clash of opposites. It’s boxing and voguing at the same time.
BABY is set in São Paulo’s old downtown. I’ve been filming the same neighbourhood for 15 years. São Paulo, with its population of 20 million, embodies the dynamic spirit of a migrant city, where every Brazilian passes by at one point in their lives. It’s not a place for settling down, but rather for experiencing the vibrant, as well as tough, life of a metropolis.
I like to imagine the map of the old downtown as a depiction of a body. São Paulo is a city that is always destroying old buildings to raise new ones. The city centre is crossed by train lines, tunnels and viaducts.
This organic, yet uncontrolled, development leaves a lot of scars in the city tissue. Modern skyscrapers stand next to neoclassical theatres, bourgeois cafés alongside centres for homeless people. It is a body marked by the past but always going ahead, looking for new things to come.
On the main set of BABY, the house where Ronaldo lives, trains pass almost inside the courtyard. Sounds from the neighbours invade the intimacy of his room. There is constant funk music coming from a favela nearby. It’s very chaotic, but sensual at the same time. These are the sounds and images of the neighbourhood that I live in. My alarm clock is the metro that passes below my building and softly wakes me every morning. We never feel completely alone, as we are part of this big engine that never stops.
Loneliness is not an option for Baby. To have a dignified life, he needs to create bonds with unknown people or even build temporary families. As I witness the disintegration of community life in Brazil, with neoliberal and individualist ideology gaining control of our society, I like to think that this film is a counterpoint to the recent political wave.
I strongly believe that freedom is not a personal achievement but a collective one.
Baby needs the support of outsiders to live his life the way he dreams of.
(Marcelo Caetano)
Main credits
João Pedro Mariano – Baby
Ricardo Teodoro – Ronaldo
Ana Flavia Cavalcanti – Priscila
Bruna Linzmeyer – Jana
Luiz Bertazzo – Torres
Marcelo Varzea – Alexandre
Patrick Coelho – Zika
Kyra Reis – Pink
Baco Pereira – Dayvid
Sylvia Prado – Tia Sueli
Ariane Aparecida – Prima Sonia
Victor Hugo Martins – Allan
Kelly Campelo – Rose, Mãe
Director – Marcelo Caetano
Writers – Marcelo Caetano and Gabriel Domingues
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