‘Please Baby Please’ Review: Andrea Riseborough Is Transfixing in Genderqueer Pseudo-Musical Extravaganza
27.01.2022 - 01:39
/ variety.com
Manuel Betancourt The opening moments of Amanda Kramer’s “Please Baby Please” play like an archly stylized “West Side Story” by way of Kenneth Anger. Only, instead of the Jets, we have the “Young Gents,” a group of leather-clad rascals who dance their way through the streets of a neon-tinged, foggy 1950s Manhattan before descending on an unsuspecting couple and, well, beating them to death.
Looking like Marlon Brando circa “The Wild One” cosplayers, this ragtag group is interrupted by two stunned bystanders, Arthur and Suze (Harry Melling and Andrea Riseborough). The moment will change the bohemian couple forever.
The lustful gazes exchanged between Arthur and Teddy (the always delectable Karl Glusman, here in full leather boy cruising mode), as well as the electrifying fear-turned-titillation Suze experiences (Arthur may want, but Suze wants to be Teddy), set them both on a conquest to undo the relationship they thought they wanted. In the process, Kramer sketches out a feverish queer manifesto on gender that feels both novel and familiar.
For by the time the Young Gents flee into the night, leaving Suze and Arthur to take in what they just witnessed, “Please Baby Please” firmly situates itself alongside a queer constellation of artists and filmmakers (like Rainer Werner Fassbinder and John Waters) whose penchant for theatricality grounds their work. Kramer has no interest in naturalism or for trafficking in the realm of the real.
The website popstar.one is an aggregator of news from open sources. The source is indicated at the beginning and at the end of the announcement. You can
send a complaint on the news if you find it unreliable.