Baby
Two men connect on the mean streets of São Paulo in Marcelo Caetano’s admirably acted Brazilian drama.
Image courtesy of Peccadillo Pictures.
The Brazilian director Marcelo Caetano has been based in São Paulo since 2004 and like his previous feature film, 2017's Body Electric, Baby is a gay drama set in that city. Caetano is also a writer and shares the screenplay credit of Baby with Gabriel Domingues who was also involved in the writing of Body Electric. Both features have won awards and in the case of Baby these have been numerous including recognition for both of its leading actors. They are João Pedro Mariano, who plays 18-year-old Wellington who likes to be known as Baby, and Ricardo Teodoro as the 42-year-old Ronaldo. One best actor award was shared by both of them, but individually it is Teodoro who can claim the larger number of prizes including, rather unusually for someone age thirty-seven, the rising star award at Cannes in 2024 (his work in theatre goes back to 2008 but film and television have taken up more of his time in recent years).
Given that Baby has also won festival awards as best film it is perhaps surprising that we should have had to wait until late 2025 for its release in the UK. From the outset it is self-evident that Caetano knows how to command attention. The film begins with a series of introductory drum beats which lead into a full band playing in a prison and, with no delay whatever, the story gets under way as Wellington is seen being released at the end of a two-year sentence. He has no time for his father, a former policeman who has rejected him for being gay, but immediately seeks out his mother only to learn that she has moved away without leaving a forwarding address. Wellington is then seen mixing with other gays of his own age who are known to him but, when he visits a gay porn cinema, he encounters Ronaldo and this stranger quickly becomes a significant figure in his life.
Now that he is out of jail Wellington has to find some way to survive in São Paulo and Ronaldo is looking for a younger partner since he knows people like Macedo (Roberto Audio) who are keen to satisfy their voyeuristic urges by paying to watch Ronaldo having sex with an attractive youngster. We later learn that Ronaldo also sells drugs on behalf of a supplier named Torres (Luiz Bertazza) and will find it useful to have Wellington – or Baby as he is now known – aiding him in this. Caetano's film is candid and non-judgmental regarding the life-style of his characters and Baby presents a convincing look at their world, an existence on the fringes of society. What makes Baby such a compelling piece of work is the complex characterisation of the relationship that develops between Ronaldo and Baby. The older man is certainly looking for the benefits that can arise from linking up with a teenager but Baby is gaining from the contacts that Ronaldo has. When Baby first speaks to him, he is thinking of having sex with him but is brushed off when he admits that he can't pay for it. Yet, despite that and the business-like nature of their subsequent connection, it becomes increasingly clear that real feelings are also involved whether that is shown by Ronaldo kissing Baby or by his jealousy when later on Baby finds a rich man who is older, Alexandre (Marcelo Varzea), and who seems to want a more sustained relationship.
While Caetano’s sureness of touch as a director draws us in, it is first and foremost the subtlety of the two leading players in capturing all the ambiguities and complexities in Ronaldo and Baby that gives the drama its power. The casting of both actors is spot-on. Mariano has both the good looks and the acting ability to ensure that we fully believe in Baby but, even more importantly, Teodoro is totally successful in portraying Ronaldo as a man who is surprising himself by unexpectedly recognising that Baby is stirring emotions in him that he has not experienced before.
Central as this relationship is to the film, Baby also persuasively adds more marginal figures including Ronaldo's former wife Jana (Ana Flavia Cavalcanti) who now has a female partner (Bruna Linzmeyer) with whom she is bringing up the child she had with Ronaldo, 13-year-old Allan (Victor Hugo Martins). Similarly, we do eventually get to see Baby’s aunt (Sylvia Prado) and his mother (Kelly Campelo) whom he eventually tracks down. All of this is competently enough done, but after the intensity of the film’s first half there is a sense of the storyline losing force as it becomes more episodic. There is an opportunity to tighten the screw when later on Ronaldo finds himself in debt to drug supplier Torres who may be out to put him down. But interposed here is the subsidiary material about Baby tracing his mother and we don't feel sufficiently caught up in this emotionally for these scenes to have any real weight. Furthermore, although the film builds up to a dramatic climax with a coda set six months later, the final section of the film lacks the emotional depth that one might expect it to have and the flashback shot which ends the film suggests only a misguided attempt to tug at the heartstrings.
With its two fine leading players adding so much to its appeal, there is much in Baby to recommend it. Indeed, the film is well worth a look but, while for much of the time it looks set to be on a similar level to the best gay cinema offerings of 2025, Mikko Mäkelä’s Sebastian and Harry Lighton’s Pillion, ultimately it doesn't quite manage to match either of them.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Cast: João Pedro Mariano, Ricardo Teodoro, Ana Flavia Cavalcanti, Bruna Linzmeyer, Luiz Bertazzo, Marcelo Varzea, Patrick Coelho, Kyra Reis, Baco Pereira, Sylvia Prado, Cleo Coelho, Roberto Audio, Mauricio de Barros, Victor Hugo Martins, Kelly Campelo.
Dir Marcelo Caetano, Pro Beto Tobiriça, Ivan Melo, Marcelo Caetano, Juliette Lepoutre, Pierre Menahem, Stienette Bosklopper and Maarten Swart, Screenplay Marcelo Caetano and Gabriel Domingues, Ph Joanna Luz and Pedro Sotero, Pro Des Thales Junqueira, Ed Fabian Remy, Costumes Gabriela Campos.
Cup Filmes/Desbun Filmes/ Plateau Produçǒes/Still Moving/ Circe Films/Kaap Holland Films-Peccadillo Pictures.
106 mins. Brazil/France/Netherlands. 2024. UK Rel: 12 December 2025. Cert. 15.
