Babes
Most comedy is built on the difference between what we think we can control our bodies, words, relationships and what, most of the time, turns out to be an uncontrollable mess. “Babes” revels in that gap with giddy abandon, endearingly imperfect characters and performances that are all heart and charisma. Also every bodily function and fluid.
This is a smart and loving movie about female friendship. But before I get to the women, let me talk about how nice it is that it does not trash the men at all ever. The men in this movie love and support their fabulous women in every way deserving of them. Another man struggles with his mental health but makes his sincere feelings clear. They aren’t bonded over some litany of complaints about guys who can’t commit or call taking care of their own children “helping.” I love a film that loves its characters so much it doesn’t need to make any of them small.
Dawn (Michelle Buteau) is a dentist who has been married for years (Hasan Minhaj plays Marty), has a 4-year-old son and as this movie begins is going into labor with her daughter. Her best friend since they were 11 years old is a yoga instructor named Eden (Ilana Glazer, who co-wrote the film with her “Broad City” colleague Josh Rabinowitz).
Buteau and Glazer give Dawn and Eden that effortlessness you only get from knowing someone through every cell in your body it’s not just support; they are each other’s biggest fans. There’s history there, chemistry, intimacy; they are endlessly fascinated by one another in ways both grand and unimportant. When Dawn leaks amniotic fluid into a theater seat on Thanksgiving morning at the 27th annual movie-going tradition Eden assumes she must have gone too far after Dawn tells her she hasn’t felt pregnant enough lately, and peers into her perineum to confirm that yes, the water has broken, and it is time to go to the hospital. Eden is there for the birth too, of course. Dawn and Marty wouldn’t have it any other way.
Then Eden gets pregnant very visibly so in a lot of scenes after a one-night stand with Claude (Stephen James), who could not possibly be dreamier or more charming if he tried. But he doesn’t try; in fact, he’s out of the picture pretty much immediately and forever, leaving Dawn to promise she’ll be there for Eden as they always have been for each other. Still we can see some mixed feelings on Dawn’s face when she assures Eden that yes indeed she will rise to this occasion even though Eden doesn’t ask her to. Maybe Eden isn’t able to hear the slight frostiness in Dawn’s voice when she corrects her for calling herself a “Black mother” (“You are not a Black mother. You are having a Black child”). But we do.
Dawn and Eden are no longer eleven. Friendship between adults is complicated like everything else dealing with what Zorba the Greek referred to as “the full catastrophe” of family. Dawn has to find time and emotional energy for two young children, returning to work, and a plumbing emergency in her apartment. Eden has pregnancy complications as a single mother with only Dawn for support. Each feels let down by the other, which is devastating because their support systems are so fragile, and even more devastating because it makes them question the idea that their relationship could ever be anything less than infinitely perfect.
Life is messy beyond belief no matter how much we would like to pretend otherwise. Sometimes breasts don’t produce the milk they’re supposed to. Occasionally babies pee directly into your face. Being pregnant in the last trimester sends your hormones on a roller coaster ride through hell that ends up with you not knowing yourself anymore because some totally different person has taken over your body and moved its center of gravity around. And then it starts you worrying about things that won’t leave your brain for the rest of your living days.
This movie knows that there’s no getting away from it so we might as well love and laugh at the mess, embrace uncertainty as an old friend, welcome randomness like a long-lost cousin who just showed up on our doorstep one day out of nowhere asking if he could crash with us for a while until he got back on his feet again or found somewhere else better suited to his needs (which would probably take forever). Because as W.H. Auden said “The funniest mortals and the kindest are those who are most aware of the baffle of being. Don’t kid themselves our care is consolable but believe a laugh is less heartless than tears.”
Watch Babes For Free On Gomovies.