Baby, It's You . Austin Chronicle . 03-30-98

Baby, It's You

DIRECTED BY: Anne Makepeace

REVIEWED: 03-30-98

When filmmaker Anne Makepeace and her husband Peter, a writer, decide to chronicle their attempts to conceive a child, they expose themselves and the audience to the brutal vagaries of fertility. So simple for some, so heartbreakingly difficult for others, the feat of conception is rife with all sorts of emotions: blame, hope, joy, futility, anger, and inequity. A pretty good arsenal for a movie. But, ultimately it is the weight of that arsenal that bogs this picture down. As Anne struggles with an increasingly remote prospect of conception, she also begins to look inward, past her aging procreative equipment to the demons that haunt her soul. An earlier, unwanted pregnancy is depicted in nightmarish visuals and accompanied by a chillingly matter-of-fact voiceover. Anne seeks delayed absolution for the abortion, and you sense that part of her believes that forgiveness would make her fertile again. She visits her brothers: one leading a solitary life tending goats in Appalachia, the other, a Manhattan yuppie planning to live part-time in Utah where he will become a part-time polygamist and father to a passel of children. She interviews aunts and uncles about her dysfunctional life and her parents' shortcomings. The camera makes us privy to the most intimate of discussions, and the effect is unsettling, like eavesdropping from behind a psychiatrist's couch. Interesting, even captivating, but do we really want to know this? In the long run, this is a film not so much about making a baby as it is about coping with the hand that's been dealt you. It could have as easily been titled, Baby, It's Me.

--Hollis Chacona

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