Baby, Don't Cry!

When Baby (Zita Bai) first meets Fox (Vas Provatakis), she knows that he has stolen her camera. She’s a delicately built 17-year-old schoolgirl. He’s a dropout, significantly bigger than her, used to a much rougher lifestyle. Nevertheless, she fights him. She may lack strength but she has no shortage of courage or fierceness. She wins his respect and makes it clear to viewers that no matter how it may look on the surface, her life has not been an easy one.

Characters like Baby are rarely seen on the big screen, and still more rarely in the foreground, driving the narrative. She’s a Chinese immigrant, still not wholly confident in English, and the camera is important to her because it provides her with a means of self expression. Fox, however, provides something different. The two embark on a passionate affair which brings her into contact with aspects of the world she has never seen before, like a behind-the-scenes introduction to the US, far from the image that tourist boards like to promote. It’s a journey of self discovery which brings her, increasingly, into conflict with a mother whose traditional values include a punitive attitude towards expressions of female sexuality.

Full of rough edges and unexpected moments, Baby, Don’t Cry! - screening at Fantasia 2021 - captures life in the raw. It’s replete with the confusion of early adulthood, the discovery of social boundaries through stress testing, constant pushing to see how much one can get away with. Life is harsh and urgent and taking the time to consider others’ perspectives on top of it all feels close to impossible, but Baby loves with the same conviction that lies behind her fighting, determined to hold onto what she and Fox have found even as their mutual clumsiness threatens to destroy it. Through all of this she’s gaining a clearer idea of who she is, what she wants, and how she does and doesn’t deserve to be treated by other people.

Bai, who co-wrote, immerses herself in the central role, giving Baby an instinctive quality that testifies to her alienation in an often hostile world. She has great chemistry with Provatakis, who neatly encapsulates the inarticulate frustration and rage of a youth who has never had much in the way of prospects, who has grown up with little guidance in a cultural space where men need to hit first or hardest, yet who still has a close relationship with his sister and tries to be tender with Baby. Over time Baby comes to perceive him more and more as if he were a real fox, whilst her mother seems more like a pig. There’s a spiritual dimension to this, rooted in Chinese tradition, and it also acts as a reminder of the animal qualities that every human possesses, especially when deprived of civilising influences.

Extensive use of close-up adds to the sense of immediacy and confinement within a world whose limits are imposed by an undernourished imagination. The changing forms of those around her illustrate that Baby is finding a way to break through those boundaries, to connect with something bigger, to find a way of moving on.