Babies (Bébés) reviews
Review by on 25 Sep 2010
BABIES is a timely reminder of being a baby when I had grown used to my current age. Whilst David Attenborough inspires us again and again to wonder at life, director Thomas Balmes does not quite have the same power to absorb you in what he is doing. The photography is pristine. National Geographic springs to mind.
The babies are Ponijao from Namibia, Bayarjargal from Mongolia, Mari from Tokyo and Hattie from San Francisco. You see each baby grow until about the time they learn to speak. I laughed when they were in a play group in San Francisco singing ‘The earth will take care of us’ and baby Hattie was desperately trying a locked door to escape. Children are wiser than adults and to simply watch children is in some ways enjoyable.
This is a fairly happy bunch (although there are one or two tantrums) and there is a sense of wonder universally felt in some of the scenes with mother and babe. The director in showing one life on a Mongolian farm, one on African scrub and two in cities advises us that through it all exists a brotherhood of man. But the film did not move me: partly because of the music (for which I think Benni Hemm Hemm would have been a better choice) and partly because constantly changing country became distracting after a time. It does what it says on the tin. And if you are a mother, it could say more to you maybe, baby.
Benedict Womack
The babies are Ponijao from Namibia, Bayarjargal from Mongolia, Mari from Tokyo and Hattie from San Francisco. You see each baby grow until about the time they learn to speak. I laughed when they were in a play group in San Francisco singing ‘The earth will take care of us’ and baby Hattie was desperately trying a locked door to escape. Children are wiser than adults and to simply watch children is in some ways enjoyable.
This is a fairly happy bunch (although there are one or two tantrums) and there is a sense of wonder universally felt in some of the scenes with mother and babe. The director in showing one life on a Mongolian farm, one on African scrub and two in cities advises us that through it all exists a brotherhood of man. But the film did not move me: partly because of the music (for which I think Benni Hemm Hemm would have been a better choice) and partly because constantly changing country became distracting after a time. It does what it says on the tin. And if you are a mother, it could say more to you maybe, baby.
Benedict Womack
Film details
Babies (Bébés)
DOCUMENTARIES
Director: Thomas Balmes
France, 2010.
78 mins. French with English subtitles.
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