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What is a musical when it’s not a musical? What is a man? And what would you get if you threw John Waters, Marlon Brando and A Clockwork Orange into a neon-soaked celluloid blender? Please Baby Please might be the answer.
When newlyweds Suze and Arthur witness a brutal attack in the foggy Manhattan streets outside their apartment one night, it has an unexpected impact on their lives. All that leather-clad hypermasculinity on display as the Young Gents greaser gang enact their shocking, but performative, act of violence incites the couple to question their respective senses of self and sexuality.
Nominally set sometime in the 50s, but filtered through a technicolour 80s lens, Please Baby Please is here to genderfuck your wildest West Side Story cum Tom of Finland fantasies. As Suze, Andrea Riseborough is breathtaking, while Harry Melling’s Arthur and Karl Glusman’s magnetic gang member Teddy are both gloriously entertaining – plus keep an eye out for a scene-stealing cameo from Demi Moore. Amanda Kramer (whose film Give Me Pity! also screens at MIFF 70) brings a deliberately theatrical aesthetic to her film that’s part Brechtian interrogation of identity, part absurdist quasi-musical, and all camp embrace of melodrama and pseudo-philosophy. Vivid, hilarious, gorgeous and erotic, Please Baby Please is unlike anything else you’ll see this festival.
“The kitsch mischief of Amanda Kramer’s genderqueer underworld odyssey is as lurid as the colour palette – electric blues and hot vaginal pinks abound.” – Screen Daily