Nasty Baby

Overview

In the opening moments of Nasty Baby, we're introduced to Freddy, played by director Sebastian Silva. Freddy is a Brooklyn-based performance artist whose latest work involves him rolling around on the floor, screaming and gurgling like a newborn child. Sounds deep, huh? Among those working on the project with him are his boyfriend Mo (Tunde Adebimpe) and their mutual friend Polly (Kristen Wiig), who is also trying to convince Mo to help her conceive a child. Freddy and Polly, in particular, are revoltingly self-absorbed – older but no wiser that the characters in outwardly similar New York narratives such as Girls and Frances Ha.

But there's an important difference between Silva and his would-be contemporaries. While storytellers like Lena Dunham and Noah Baumbach purport to shine a critical eye on their characters, at the end of the day they tend to pull their punches since they want their characters to be likable – at least to a degree. Silva, on the other hand, shows no such mixed emotions. From the get go it seems clear he views these people with disdain, their privilege and self-importance born of a poisonous hipster culture that indie film increasingly tends to celebrate.

That disdain is really crystallised in the film's shocking final act, which we'll do our best to talk about without spoiling. Put vaguely, after an hour of relatively low-stakes drama, Silva pulls the rug out with a vicious narrative turn, leaving both his characters and his audience struggling to find their feet. It's jarring and unpleasant and viscerally effective, but most importantly it speaks to Silva's broader thematic point. People this self-centred aren't just annoying. They're dangerous.

The film's three leads are all appropriately understated, with Wiig in particular showing strong dramatic chops in her most interesting film role to date. The other big highlight is Reg E. Cathy, best known for his work in various HBO shows and Netflix's House of Cards. Here he plays Bishop, a mentally unstable old man who lives on Freddy's block, who Freddy regularly antagonises, and whose actual problems throw those of Silva's protagonists into sharp relief.

Nasty Baby will no doubt prove divisive. The best films usually do. But love it or hate it, recognise it for what it is: timely social satire of the most scathing and cynical kind.