Imagine that you had a baby and let a film crew follow film your child extensively throughout the first 18 months of life, and then edit the resulting footage down to the most adorable and/or comic 20 minutes. Multiplied by four, this is pretty much what director Thomas Balmes has done. Two babies are from wealthy urban centers, Tokyo and San Francisco, and two are from rural areas of poorer countries, Namibia and Mongolia. Two are boys and two are girls, but at this age you don’t notice so much.
The babies interact with parents, animals (pets in the cities, wildlife and domestic animals elsewhere), other babies, and objects. No narrator interjects. No onscreen titles explain anything beyond view of the camera. No subtitles translate the dialogue, but it’s minimal and obviously trivial anyway. Of course, one cannot help but observe the obvious cross-cultural differences and similarities. Western babies spend a lot less time naked. Japanese people apparently sing “Happy Birthday” in English. But, just as obviously, there is no agenda here, no point of view at all, really. Whether this makes the film beautiful, vacuous, or both is debatable.
IMDB link
viewed 4/28/10 at Rtiz Bourse [PFS screening] and reviewed 5/7/10
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