Baby (15)
Directed by Marcelo Caetano 
★★★★☆

WHAT happens when an 18-year-old gay boy steps out of prison after two bruising years behind bars? In Marcelo Caetano’s Baby, the answer is anything but predictable.

Joao Pedro Mariano’s Wellington — soon nicknamed “Baby” — stumbles back into the streets of Sao Paulo, a city wired with danger, humming beneath his every step. Instead, he finds himself alone, pretty much abandoned by his parents, moving through the world with a skittish fragility that makes every gesture feel magnified.  

Wandering into a seedy gay cinema, Baby meets Ronaldo (Ricardo Teodoro), an escort whose tough exterior cracks just enough to let tenderness seep through. Their relationship unfurls with the crooked grace of a fire escape: part refuge, part danger, always one misstep away from collapse.

Baby moves in, and the two begin constructing a life that feels both improvised and inevitable — the beating, bewildering heart of this phenomenal film.

There’s a lovely scene where Baby finds his mother — quiet, aching, rendered in almost no dialogue — proving how much emotion can bloom in silence. Just as vital are Baby’s queer friends, endearing misfits who orbit him with stubborn loyalty. Their bus-ride Vogue performances — singing, dancing, claiming tiny moving stages across the city — burst with colour and defiance, showing how friendship can become both a shield and a lifeline in tough times.

These moments of queer joy ground the film and remind us that survival is rarely a solo act. Caetano lets beauty and brutality elbow each other for space: tender confessions collide with street-hardened grit; the hothouse intimacy of queer desire rubs against the cold machinery of poverty, drugs, and entrenched social inequality.

The entire cast ignites the screen: Ana Flavia Cavalcanti as Priscilla, the lesbian mother of Ronaldo’s son, Bruna Linzmeyer as her wife, Jana, and Luiz Bertazzo’s magnetic drug dealer, Torres, each bringing sparks that illuminate Baby’s world in surprising colours.

And then there’s the cinematography by Joana Luz and Pedro Sotero: lush, moody, electric, capturing everything from working-class solidarity and street violence to family breakdowns and queer kinship, snapping stereotypes in half.

But nothing compares to the final rooftop scene — Baby and Ronaldo dancing atop a faded blue-and-white building, a moment so moving, sexy, and incandescent it feels like the whole city is holding its breath as the sun sets.

I can’t recommend this film enough. Go watch it — you won’t forget it.

In cinemas December 12