Baby Love

No outings to the movies since Quantum of Solace and then two in an evening! The French Film Festival is on which is a good opportunity to get to see something at the Embassy and last night was a good opportunity to get out of the rain. The first of last night's offerings was Baby Love -a light-hearted look at gay adoption and surrogate motherhood. I hesitate to say its a comedy as the subject matter is pretty heavy but while it's probably partly intended to make you think its principal purpose is to entertain.

Baby love features Manu, a 42 year-old gay paediatrician (possessor of the most astonishing nose in France) who wants a baby and his partner Philippe (possessor of the second-most astonishing nose in France) who does not. The desire to breed precipitates the end of the relationship and elevates a chance encounter with an Argentinian overstayer into a marriage of convenience.

The ramifications of this scenario are explored in detail. How do you have a baby if you're gay and your sperm is defective? What do you do if your wife of convenience ends up fancying you? What do you do if she changes her mind about having a baby? What do you if having had sex with one woman, other women get ideas?

While this is mostly quite amusing it raises a lot of other questions, like is giving up a child for adoption almost bound to do the mother's head in and should any reasonable person ask that of her? Is the experience of witnessing a birth enough to convert the determined non-parent into enthusiastic parent in the space of hours?

I didn't think Baby Love fulfilled either of it's intentions well enough - it wasn't funny enough and not thought provoking enough to be particularly memorable.

Anne's rating 2.5/5 Ian's rating 2/5