Babes Review: Ilana Glazer's Non-Rom-Com Is All About Poop And Pregnancy [SXSW 2024]
Filmmaker Pamela Adlon's "Babes" is about motherhood and friendship and the messiness of growing up and realizing you're less prepared than ever to confront life's difficulties. It's also about bodily fluids. Poop. Vomit. Mucus. Urine. And, perhaps especially, the various liquids of various consistencies produced by a vagina. Its characters aren't grossed out by these fluids. Rather, they're fascinated by them. Amused by them. They talk about them constantly. Some would call this depiction frank, but it's closer to glorious and intentional immaturity — so many things about our bodies, and what our bodies produce, are so awful and foul and inexplicable that if we can't talk about it, if we can't laugh out it, our hellish existences will become even more apocalyptic.
Of course, Adlon is no stranger to direct portrayals of the Stuff We Don't Talk About, which she chronicled in her acclaimed FX series "Better Things." She brings that bluntness to this film, her feature debut, but there's a second voice at work here: a disarming shot of gonzo millennial dorkiness that's chaotic, ribald, and yes, deeply concerned about poop. In star and co-writer Ilana Glazer (still wielding that "Broad City" energy), Adlon has found the perfect big screen partner. It's the proudly feminist, absolutely filthy equivalent of that shot from "Predator" where the musclebound hands grip each other and shine with sweat. Emphasis on the sweat. Because bodily fluids, of course.
"Babes" is a tale of two best friends — freewheeling single yoga instructor Eden (Glazer) and her very married best friend, Dawn (Michelle Buteau), who has just given birth to her second child. We're present for the birth of baby number two in the film's opening scenes, and it's a gauntlet dropped. This is a pregnancy comedy where characters are deeply concerned about whether or not human feces ends up on a baby during delivery. The easily-nauseated need not apply, but the vulgarities of "Babes" are always more verbal than visual. The characters' greatest physical shames lurk offscreen, but they carry such power that they just can't help but talk about them as much as possible whenever they find a willing ear.
Glazer and Josh Rabinowitz script eases into the story proper: after a one-night-stand, Eden finds herself pregnant, decides to keep the child, and enlists Dawn to be her guru through all things motherhood. But Eden is absolutely unprepared for this, and Dawn is just so, so, so, so ... tired. Even when everything is going right, everything feels like it's going horribly wrong. There is no such thing as a stress-free evening or a moment without a terrifying responsibility (or the repercussions for ignoring it) rearing its ugly head. And that's before a child enters the picture.
"Babes" would be a stressful film if it wasn't such a funny one, if its leads weren't so charming, their chemistry so lived-in. This could've been cringe comedy, but Adlon and Glazer are less interested in discomfort and more interested in how we seek solace in the people we love to deal with our discomfort. Because discomfort is constant. Our disgusting bodies are full of piss and crap and things that leak and drop. Life is worthwhile because we spend time with folks who can help us laugh at the grotesqueries.
If Eden's journey is a smidge familiar (Will this chaotic young woman learn a little bit of responsibility and grow up just enough?), Glazer helps you forget. It's a fearless and filthy performance. You probably know this woman. Just as effective is Buteau, whose low-key (until it's not) panic at the mere concept of life itself should prove familiar to anyone with a pulse and bills to pay. The malaise, the anger, the listlessness that accompany day-to-day adulthood are presented with a humanity that stops one in the their tracks as often as it makes you giggle. That Adlon surrounds these two with supporting characters and bizarre events and locations that are just surreal enough to feel like something weird that actually happened only reinforces the authenticity of the central performances. Her deliberately low-key style allows the film's best absurd moments to shine brighter. They feel like something that actually happened to your wife's best friend's cousin's neighbor, man.
"Babes" spends enough time avoiding convention that it's perhaps a little disappointing that it begins to embrace familiar beats as it enters the home stretch, and a story that had previously been unpredictable and driven by mood and behavior starts becoming a bit ... routine. But it does mean the film is a crowd-pleaser, and it does deliver big, warm moments for the intended audience of this film: mothers, sisters, and female-identifying BFFs. In other words, not the author of this review. I'm going to deny anyone the relief of a movie that tells you everything is going to work out. And yes, it's totally normal for your body to do that.
/Film Rating: 7.5 out of 10