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Film Review: BABYSITTER: Comedic Satire on Misogyny with Surprising Depth [Tribeca 2022]

Baby Sitter

Babysitter Review

Babysitter (2022) Film Review from the 21st Annual Tribeca Film Festival, a movie directed by Monia Chokri, written by Catherine Léger, and starring Patrick Hivon, Monia Chokri, Nadia Tereszkiewicz, Steve LaPlante, Hubert Proulx, Nathalie Breuer, and Eve Duranceau.

Babysitter is a visceral comedy with unexpected heights and depths woven into its satire on misogyny, adapted by Catherine Léger from her own 2017 play.

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At first, we might be tempted to think this film is about the journey of Cédric, an upper-middle-class engineer whose televised drunken amorous assault on a female reporter forces him to face the consequences of his misogyny at the risk of his job and reputation.

Or maybe it’s instead about scrutinizing Nadine, Cédric’s partner and mother of his child, steeped in postpartum depression. But I think the real nugget of the story lies with Léa, their infant daughter as the next generation of women and their place in a changing society. This colicky infant starts out as the passive catalyst that sets the events in motion, but by the film’s end she represents more than that.

But more on Léa’s more poignant role later. Until then, despite the weighty issue of misogyny, this begins as a breezy farce. Rapid-fire quips about boobs and buns accompany close-ups of Cédric and his companions among the rowdy audience at an MMA match. The director, Monia Chokri fully enjoys correlating the fighters’ brutal intimacy in the ring with Cédric’s crude repartee with his friends. There is an especially gripping scene of the fighters grappling on the canvas, smearing blood everywhere, that brings out the erotic subterfuge they share.

Following this is the inciting incident: Cédric forces a drunken embrace on a prominent reporter, Chantel Tremblay — right on camera, no less — followed by a tirade of chauvinistic insults. To make matters worse, the entire fiasco is reported in print the next day by Cédric’s own brother, journalist Jean-Michel, which draws the attention of Cédric’s boss, Brigitte, who suspends him indefinitely until he makes the penance.

There is a fair amount of slapstick that brings Amy, the babysitter, into the picture. Suffice it to say that the family flounders with wry humor, especially Cédric, now saddled with fretful Léa while he writes an apologia by way of a tell-all confessional which hopefully bolsters his bank account as he purges his psyche.

At about this point Amy skates into their lives, full of candor and giggles. She has a knack for flipping banter to her advantage, but unflinching audacity is her real power: a one-size-fits-all sort of muse in the guise of a homecoming queen. She claims to resemble Brigette Bardot, and maybe she does. But she reminds me more of Brandy the Rollergirl in Boogie Nights instead, with a bit of “Lolita” tossed in.

Amy confronts those around her with quiet, gentle confidence. For Cédric, she is exactly the tween we’ve all come to expect from young woman of barely legal age, toying with adulthood by caring for someone else’s child. But in practical terms, nothing more than to populate a fantasy. Evidently Amy is like a magical godmother to Léa; she comforts the fussy infant like neither of her parents can.

To Nadine, Amy is a walking Disneyland vacation. She dresses the harried mother in a wide-collared cape, similar in design to that of the Evil Queen in Snow White — but in lavender silk that confers all the dignities of royal entitlement instead of the black-and-purple shroud of step-motherly vengeance. For Jean-Paul, while sunbathing with her charge in the backyard, she actually becomes the nymphet Lolita. Nadia Tereszkiewicz fits this bill very nicely; she brings all the required freshness to Amy.

The actors all around, with the help of tip-top editing, bring the sense of hi-jinx necessary to this sort of comedy. Chokri, as Nadine, gets more depth by design through battling depression, and she conveys the feeling of resigned futility very well. Patrick Hivon’s works his subtle handsomeness (he has a knock-out smile) and fits into Cédric’s conscripted attitude role of the prosperous suburbanite.

The women fare better than the men when it comes to range of expression, and they seem to get more benefit from Amy’s ministrations. The men pretty much stay mired in chauvinism: Jean-Michel steals his brother’s book deal for himself; Brigette’s male subordinates accuse her of that old come-hither-back-off tactic. Cédric, on the other hand, does learn better (the hard way, though) and realizes Nadine’s value as a partner. He reconciles with her in a brief, sweet moment in their final scene together as they hold hands.

But it’s Léa who actually gets in the final word, suggesting that Babysitter is something more than a sexy romp with social commentary. She’s now a toddler in her final scene, watching Jean-Michel’s television interview about his best-seller challenging systemic misogyny. Her expression tells all: even at that age, she understands it, deep down, for the dissembling that it is. And later, maybe, as part of the next generation of tweens herself, she can choose to skate past all the politics and make the best peace.

Of course, it’s a given that the issue of misogyny is one among more than a few that must be resolved, better sooner than later. But by the same token, social progress is refinement — a process, not an event, and that we shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Rating: 8.5/10

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David McDonald

David Erasmus McDonald was born in Baltimore into a military family, traveling around the country during his formative years. After a short stint as a film critic for a local paper in the Pacific Northwest and book reviewer, he received an MA in Creative Writing from Wilkes University, mentored by Ross Klavan and Richard Uhlig. Currently he lives in the Hudson Valley, completing the third book of a supernatural trilogy entitled “Shared Blood.”
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