Amanda Kramer’s Please Baby Please opened the International Film Festival Rotterdam 2022 with a kinky flourish.
In this dazzling affair set in a bizarre underworld of sleaze and style, Andrea Riseborough and Harry Melling star as bohemian couple Arthur and Suze, who are cool but conformist, in 1950s New York. They quickly become fixated on seductive fantasies and are forced to confront their own sexual identities in the process. After witnessing a murder by a violent leather-clad street gang, who now know where they live, the couple are both horrified and piqued by the gang’s ultra-violence and seeming hyper-masculinity. Melling’s character Arthur in particular quickly becomes infatuated with one especially chiseled member of the gang, which releases a river of underlying exploratory queer feelings and erotic curiosity.
What progresses throughout the film is a lurid game of cat and mouse between Arthur, Suze, and the gang, interspersed by humorous interjections from their boho friends and pseudo-philosophical musings about what their relationship is and should be. A series of fantasies about their sexual liberation, separate from their own marriage but not entirely removed, becomes their reality, and the line is deliberately blurred between these narratives. This technique is achieved through Kramer’s overtly theatrical style of production, which uses a stage-like setting, almost to the point of absurdity. Yet this works so well with the camp setting and the dialogue, which is sometimes profound but often deliberately trite, and the constant neon blue/red palette. It is simply gorgeous to look at, the heavy artistry does not subtract but is integral to its chic charm, polishing and bolstering its unconventional plot.
Andrea Riseborough truly steals the show, displaying a manic range of characteristics that makes Suze a pandora’s box of passions and eyeliner. Through her interaction with an eccentric and glamorous but self-actualised neighbour, played by ‘80/’90s icon Demi Moore, she has realisations about her own desires and underlying kinks separate to Arthur’s queer awakening — including the use of sex toys and S&M. Suze’s frustrations with Arthur’s lack of traditional masculinity leads to her fantasies being about not just sex but the increasingly appealing violence of the gang. She commits to going down the rabbit-hole of vice and reverie and, thanks to Riseborough’s startling performance, we are truly here for it.
Though Please Baby Please undoubtedly discusses sex, the tensions which arise from fantasy are given much more importance. The exploration of the queer and perverse does not actually give way to full-frontal demonstrations, but instead clever, and often downright hilarious, illustrations and representations of the act, which work even better in such a drama. The adoption of the iron and washing machine as sexualised objects ties in to 1950s American consumerism and the associated gender roles implied by these household helpers. In this sense, all characters act as both a reflection of their time period, but also a subversion of it, which ties in nicely to Kramer’s overall direction with this piece, just as the fever-dream setting of New York at once typifies West Side Story but also completely reverses it.
Though not without its faults, such as scenes and silences which linger for slightly too long, Please Baby Please is fun and dramatic, working best when it melds the stylised with the sleaze. The chic and vivid, yet shadowy, aesthetic gives the whole affair a dreamlike state, which further intoxicates the viewer. The glow and the flair end up meaning more than any form of plot resolution. It is a perverse celebration, a cheeky middle finger to the stuffiness of the American heterodox tradition. Strong performances, many by LGBTQ+ actors such as Jake Choi playing one of the more threatening greasers, and non-binary actor Ryan Simkins playing a more sensitive and frustrated gang member, make this work as a film, which could easily play as a stage show. Please Baby Please illustrates to us, in filmmaking and in understanding gender dynamics and sexual fluidity, that the performance can often be as important as the core.
