Baby, a Brazilian auteur film, opens with a silent crash. Wellington, 18 years old, leaves a juvenile detention center. He finds the street empty of promises. His parents have disappeared, and the immense city becomes a theater of wandering. Very quickly, he meets the gaze of Ronaldo, thirty-six years old, an ambiguous figure with a tender heart. Thus begins a story of love, bodies, and struggle, anchored in social reality.
The director Marcelo Caetano, a rising figure in Brazilian auteur cinema, orchestrates this encounter like a ballet of contradictions. He favors gestures, more eloquent than words, to evoke fear, desire, and abandonment. His camera follows Wellington through the streets of São Paulo, a sprawling and sometimes indifferent city. Through this urban poem, Baby recalls the complexity of existence on the peripheries.
Marcelo Caetano: a free and committed cinema
Marcelo Caetano, born in Belo Horizonte in 1982, has established himself among the rising voices of alternative cinema in Brazil. After Corpo Elétrico in 2017, Baby extends a realistic and political vein, while betting on sensuality. He films in the streets, without closed sets, valuing an approach halfway between fiction and documentary.
This film responds to the Bolsonaro years, marked by massive cuts in funding for so-called LGBTQI+ cinema. It took seven years to bring Baby to the screen, with determination. Caetano criticizes the grip of traditional family models. He advocates for chosen families, based on love and solidarity, a recurring theme in contemporary Brazilian cinema.
Filming São Paulo is like shining a spotlight on those neglected by the state: the homeless, sex workers, voguing communities. Each shot embraces the city and its frenzy. "The colors have an orgy," confides Caetano. The red, in digital, becomes bright, a symbol of urgent passion and latent violence.
João Pedro Mariano: the innocence of Baby
The role of Wellington, nicknamed "Baby," is entrusted to João Pedro Mariano, 21 years old. For his first major role, he immersed himself in downtown São Paulo. He explored saunas and porn cinemas to grasp the clandestine reality that feeds the film. He embodies a young man suddenly confronted with adulthood, carrying the hope of a rebirth.
His candor disconcerts and seduces. Despite abandonment, prostitution, and violence, Baby still seeks a home. He wants to believe that sincere love can blossom amid the chaos of his existence. When he plays on the console with Ronaldo’s son, he is no longer an escort or delinquent, but a child dreaming of simply being accepted.
Ricardo Teodoro: an ambiguous mentor
Opposite him, Ricardo Teodoro plays Ronaldo, older, tougher. A former dancer, a beginner actor, he lends this character an apparent muscular strength. Behind this mask, one perceives a deep vulnerability. Ronaldo invents an exaggerated virility as a shield against the aggressions of daily life.
The bond between Baby and Ronaldo goes beyond a romance. It questions power dynamics, dependency, and transaction. Who saves whom? Who manipulates the other? The story does not decide. Instead, it invites contemplation of the complexity of this relationship, a mirror of the contradictions of Brazilian society.
A unique tone and a place in auteur cinema
At the end of the 1950s, prolific Brazil experienced Cinema Novo, akin to the French New Wave. Led by Glauber Rocha, Nelson Pereira dos Santos, and Carlos Diegues, it combines political commitment, social realism, and formal freedom. Its credo: a cinema poor in means but rich in ideas.
Baby fits into the lineage of a more daring Brazilian cinema that has emerged since the 1980s, when authors like Geraldo de Barros and Ana Carolina Soares were already facing censorship. Today, this movement is gaining international recognition. Filmmakers often explore themes of marginality, identity, and desire, as Caetano does so well here.
The filmmaker is also inspired by social realism. Like Walter Salles or Hector Babenco, he examines the cracks of a Brazil with glaring inequalities. His perspective clearly draws an unprecedented portrait of a youth in search of bearings. Baby gives a face and a voice to those who remain invisible in mainstream media.
Critical reception and international impact
Presented at the Critics’ Week of the Cannes Film Festival 2024, Baby won over observers. Critics praised its intensity and accuracy, highlighting the visual poetry that envelops this chronicle of wandering. Audiences were sensitive to the humanity of the actors. The film also illuminates, without voyeurism, the reality of the marginalized in a raw Brazil.
Beyond borders, distributors in Europe and Latin America are interested in this committed film. On social media, the enthusiasm is palpable. Excerpts circulate, sparking debates and raising awareness. Universities are considering symposiums to study the work of Marcelo Caetano, one of the faces of the renewal of Brazilian cinema.
A social drama and an ode to dignity
Baby mixes social drama, romantic melodrama, and urban and social chronicle. The deliberately slow pace underscores the tension that inhabits each scene. Caetano claims the influence of Wong Kar-wai, Almodóvar, and Claire Denis, filmmakers known for their sensory approach to emotions. In turn, the filmmaker makes the Brazilian night a field of exploration, where clandestine parties and miseries intersect.
Under the grayness of urban lighting, Baby and Ronaldo struggle with their doubts, their impulses, their quest for identity. The silences, heavy with meaning, speak more than long speeches. Baby invites us to see dignity everywhere, even where it seems broken by precariousness.
Released on March 19, 2025, Baby runs for 1 hour and 47 minutes. It is shown in various countries, including Brazil, France, and the Netherlands, reaching a diverse audience. In a cinematic landscape often dominated by blockbusters, this auteur film reaffirms the strength of a free cinema. Through its gaze on marginality and love, it offers a message of hope. The creative vitality of the Brazilian scene remains in full effervescence.
