Nasty Baby **½ (2015, Kristen Wiig, Sebastián Silva, Tunde Adebimpe) – Movie Review

Kristen Wiig plays Polly, best friend to a nice, well-off gay couple Freddy and Mo (Sebastián Silva, Tunde Adebimpe), in writer-director Sebastián Silva’s intriguing indie satirical drama. The close-knit trio looks to create a life, while being confronted with a situation that causes them to take a life.

Silva’s weird indie film intrigues fully and involves up to a point, and has three memorable, fully sketched characters, playing fair by the gay couple and and giving them generous screen time. Strange and alienating though it can be, feeling like it’s only a movie, it nevertheless feels real at the same time because of the likeable actors and their oddly appealing characters, as well as the particular American flavour of their situation in Brooklyn, New York City. That flavour is both geographical and emotional, as well as intellectual. Mark Margolis plays the key character of Richard.

It was mostly filmed in the Brooklyn neighbourhood of Fort Greene in the autumn of 2013. The coffee shop scenes were shot at Smooch Café and the extras were patrons in the café that day.

Silva was told Nasty Baby would be accepted for the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival if he changed his ending. When he declined, his film was rejected, and it premiered instead at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival.

Nasty Baby is out in cinemas and On Demand 8 April 2016 #NastyBabyFilm

© Derek Winnert 2016 Movie Review

Link to Derek Winnert’s home page for more reviews: http://derekwinnert.com/