“What is a man, anyway?” a character poses halfway through Amanda Kramer’s intoxicating, kitschy Please Baby Please. It cheekily asks what’s cool, sexy, and where you draw the line between good and bad. Kramer has made John Waters proud.
The film opens with a group of leather-clad hoodlums terrorizing a city block before they take their rage out on a couple right before the eyes of Suze and Arthur (Andrea Riseborough and Harry Melling), a square couple. The opening montage is like a horny West Side Story wet dream–all machismo and violence–but we know immediately that Kramer is winking at us from the get-go.
Suze and Arthur become fearful that The Young Gents will come after them next, but they each become fascinated with the masculinity these guys exude. Men are supposed to be tough, rough, and take what they want. Is every guy trying to be Stanley Kowalski or are they simply following the unspoken instructions they know inside their head? Suze becomes drunk on the notion of how men act with their given freedoms while something sexual awakens in Arthur towards Teddy, the Gents leader played with sexy, dangerous allure by Karl Glusman.
Kramer’s film is a playground–sumptuous but with a community theater charm. Signs are handwritten with markers. Suze and Arthur’s apartment is drab greens and browns, but other spaces are lit with proud bisexual colors of pink and blue. When Suze visits the rich Maureen (Demi freaking Moore!), her apartment is drenched in blue with cutouts serving as kitchen appliances. Moore has always exuded sex and power, and her voice coos and cracks as she tells Suze that kitchen appliances are simply square primitive vibrators that men think women need. Suze even fantasizes The Young Gents dominating her with kitchen tools.
Riseborough is a beast. Seeing Suze’s body change shape and movement is a physical embodiment of a woman ready to be unleashed. She gives us everything. Melling proves that Daniel Radcliffe isn’t the only Harry Potter actor who has taken that fame to thought-provoking corners. Like Riseborough, his body movement is fascinating, and he is vocal about not understanding why men need to act a certain way (“I don’t feel the need to act male,” he says in the second half of the film). The epilogue is both romantic but thrilling to watch.
Please Baby Please is provocative, sexy, and campy. Give me more, Kramer. Please, baby, please.
Please Baby Please is playing in select cities now.
