Director Jesse Dvorak’s crime drama is a bit problematic in that it’s a film that constantly jumps from theme to theme and never quite decides on what kind of story it wants to tell. It’s both about the immigrant experience in America, followed by culture shock often experienced by main character Baby. Most of the time she struggles with what she thinks are the norms for American culture, and this amounts to a script that’s never quite focused and feels ultimately under cooked.
“Baby, Don’t Cry” follows Baby, a withdrawn and sensitive 17-year-old Chinese immigrant from a troubled home, living in the outskirts of Seattle. One day, she meets a 20-year-old drug dealer named Fox. She is soon entrenched in a lifestyle of hard-partying nights, law-bending days and codependent young love. Without over-glorifying youth or scorning at poverty, “Baby, Don’t Cry’ consists largely of the adventures of these precocious post-high school kids who live on the edge of the social ladder.
There’s a lot to unwrap when it comes to the themes about social dynamics, cultural difference, and the entire experience of immigrants in America. Director Jesse Dvorak is never really shy about depicting both American culture and the immigrant experience as something of an ugly mashing of ideas and ideals. A lot of “Baby, Don’t Cry” is a dark and dreary coming of age drama that often times borders on a violent crime thriller. Dvorak’s film is abstract and surreal enough to where the dynamic between Fox and Baby feels like the opening salvo before a bloody crime spree. But that never really unfolds in to anything more than a twisted romance where Baby is seeking the idea of the co-dependent relationship but with someone entirely different in her life.
Fox is something new in Baby’s life. He’s dangerous and vicious. He’s also a change from the monotony and misery of her home life. But whether or not he’s exactly good for her and her ultimate fate is often ambiguous and suspenseful. Vas Provatakis is very good as the complex Fox, a man who is despicable, but also filled with his own demons. Fox is an engaging protagonist who could spell doom or freedom for Baby, and that depends wholly on how far she is willing to go with him and the violent lifestyle that he leads. Much of the film is centered on Baby and her horrendous home life which involves a broken mother reeling from the death of her husband.
Dvorak gives us surreal glimpses in to Baby’s childhood, emphasizing the darker aftermath of an arranged marriage with two parents that have withered away and have grown to loathe one another. Whether it’s through budgetary limitations or something else, “Baby, Don’t Cry” feels slightly unfinished, and it leaves us on an uncomfortably ambiguous note. While it does often stumble thematically, and suffers from lack of focus, “Baby, Don’t Cry” is a solid drama with strong turns by the entire cast, and a fascinating glimpse at the “American dream.”
The Fantasia International Film Festival runs every year, and this year runs virtually from August 5th until August 25th.