Baby Review: A Sharp Portrait of LGBTQ+ Brazilian Survivors Adrift in the Established Order
Channelling the urban restlessness and pulsating life of São Paulo, Marcelo Caetano’s gripping drama centres on those who inhabit the outskirts of an constantly evolving metropolis. Fresh out of juvenile prison, 18-year-old Wellington (the actor João Pedro Mariano) faces a critical turning point; abandoned by his parents, the impressionable young man finds solace in the arms of others.
On an late-night excursion with his lively group of LGBTQ+ and gender non-conforming friends, Wellington crosses paths with Ronaldo (Ricardo Teodoro), a muscular, charming hustler over double his age. Shrouded in the wavering neon of a XXX cinema, their first meeting is intimate and charged, with an edge of danger. Ronaldo swiftly initiates Wellington to the shadowy world of sex work and selling drugs.
A Portrait of Understanding Instead of Sensationalism
Caetano depicts Wellington’s new life of crime with gentle sympathy rather than as a exploitative warning story. Now adopting the moniker Baby, he enters his commercial trysts with swaggering confidence and touching naivety. To his clients, Wellington offers more than his youth and his body, but also moments of care.
In the hectic energy of São Paulo, teeming with crowded backstreets and brightly painted facades, there’s a gnawing loneliness, as adrift individuals hold fast to one another for fleeting joy.
"The city might be filled with danger, yet they are the place where they can find their own family, too."
A Complicated Relationship of Love and Control
Ronaldo is both a lover and a guardian-like mentor to Wellington, but their connection is thrown off course by envy and economic precarity. Threats from nefarious characters in the criminal underworld seem minor next to the dread of government monitoring and imprisonment, epitomized by the hovering figures of police officers making their rounds.
Baby is especially potent as a perceptive study of the forgotten souls who have been failed by the established structure. The film functions as a moving look into resilience, chosen family, and the search for purpose within a demanding urban landscape.
