Babies (2010)
Directed by Thomas Balmes. StudioCanal.
Babies captures the first year in the lives of four children, from Namibia, Japan, Mongolia and the US.
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It is a quiet film, when the adults speak their words are incidental. Instead of dialogue, the stunning cinematography of Jerome Almeras, Frazer Bradshaw and Steeven Petitteville is key to its success. They use unusual angles to capture the babies’ worlds, from the vast, empty landscapes of rural Mongolia to a tightly framed shot of a California mother expressing milk, pictured simply from the neck to navel. The camera work lends the film a sense of wonder, as the audience is encouraged to see the world with fresh eyes and notice things we may otherwise miss, mirroring the experience of the babies themselves, who are discovering everything for the very first time.
In letting the children’s stories speak for themselves, Babies is life-affirming without being at all contrived. All the infants are well loved. Their experiences are vastly different, but they reach the same milestones. Watching the babies in Mongolia, Tokyo and California each interact with their family’s cat is a simple demonstration of how essentially similar they are, despite great geographic distances. Sequences featuring the babies’ siblings, particularly the Mongolian boy Bayar’s elder brother, inject humour and a glimpse of the infants’ future lives.
Babies is an example of how a very simple idea, well executed, can be quite compelling.
