Babystar, 2025.
Directed by Joscha Bongard.
Starring Maja Bons, Bea Brooks, Liliom Lewald.
SYNOPSIS:
A teenage influencer gradually becomes aware of what part she plays in her parent’s online enterprises.
We are now living in a world where some of us have only known a world seen through an online lens. The urge to keep up with algorithms, followers and likes is so much a part of life that sometimes the intense pressure of always being ‘on’ is overlooked or dismissed. For those at the forefront, though, where your life is your business, and literally everything is a promotional activity, lines can, and often do, get pretty blurry.
Coming off like a Haneke journey into messed-up familial motivations and whims, Bongard’s very of-the-moment satirical drama also shares something of the twisted family setups examined in much of Yorgos Lanthimos’s work. What we have here is a searing takedown of the online world, where identities, lifestyles, and dreams are traded with little insight into what the exponents of these glittering, fantastical style choices are feeling.
But sometimes there isn’t a choice. That is the case with Maja Bons’ Luca, whose most precious memories, of birthday parties or bonding with mother (Bea Brooks) and father (Lilian Lewald) over normally private matters, are broadcast right into the accounts and brainwaves of ever-eager subscribers.
Part of 16-year-old Luca is ok with this; after all, it’s all she’s ever known. Her parents are ambitious, caring on the surface, and provide her with everything she needs. The crunch really comes when a new challenger to her princess status emerges.
When her parents reveal they’re planning to have a new child, and with it more opportunities for views and money, Luca hates the idea. It’s a moment that breaks the whole carefully framed ego and life that has been built up for her. But she has reserves of strength she didn’t know, and soon she’s figuring out ways to get out of the influencer palace…
Much of the success of this striking psychological drama is down to Bons’ subtle performance and the fact that both parents are believable in their single-minded vision. They are not supervillains or monsters, but rather deeply flawed and vain individuals who do not see how they have harmed their child.
Luca becomes a figure to cheer on, and Bongard is careful to show us the human side of her odd life with genuine emotion bit by bit, not in a landslide of expression. The weird dark humour of the first half gives way to a more sombre reflection on the state of influencer culture and how ruinous for mental health it can potenitally be. The closing chapters shift again, to a dramatic showing of the performer hoping to escape the circus.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Robert W Monk
