“I don’t know what degree we are in anymore. The line of the character embodied by Steve Laplante towards the end of Baby sitter perfectly sums up the state of mind in which this film, the second feature film by Monia Chokri, can plunge us, based on a play by Catherine Léger who also wrote the screenplay.
Posted at 8:30 a.m.
Baby sitter twirls between different shades. Between feminism and submission, between beauty and its diktats, between misogyny and femininity, between the culture of banishment and freedom of opinion, or even between charm and seduction, and even between eroticism and perversion…
Monia Chokri and Catherine Léger don’t want to tell us what to think, but rather make us think about power relations and the notion of desire. All with a very defined and polished artistic direction, as was the case with Chokri’s excellent first film, My brother’s wife.
The tone is set from the first scene as Cédric (excellent Patrick Hivon) and his friends attend a bloody boxing match – the ultimate symbol of masculinity and domination. With a quick montage where close-ups follow one another (particularly of breasts) to western music, Monia Chokri quickly plunges us into the heart of her universe, sometimes closer to fantasy than reality.
At the end of the fight, Cédric, completely drunk, kisses a journalist live on TV. The images of his misconduct will go viral, so much so that the young father will be suspended from his job as an engineer. His wife Nadine, played by Monia Chokri, will be rather jaded by his gesture. It must be said that she experiences postpartum depression and spends her nights in the car trying to put their daughter of a few months to sleep.
While Nadine runs away from home for a while in the hope of getting back to work, Cédric hires a young baby sitter with a lolita look (tremendously played by the French actress Nadia Tereszkiewicz) whose ingenuous character is however only superficial.
The babysitter will be welcome, because Nadine hurts her ankle back home, while Cédric decides to write a book – with the help of his journalist brother who denounced him, brilliantly played by Steve Laplante – to get out grown from his sexual misconduct which made all of Quebec react.
Destabilizing and daring
Not all movie buffs will grasp the many references to 1970s horror movies. B-movie aesthetic, though sometimes the form overrides the narrative too much.
Note that Nadine and Cédric live in an opulent house with access to social networks and an electric car, but they are surrounded by decoration from another era with red velvet carpets and amber tableware.
As a spectator, it was said, one should not expect Baby sitter denounces something specific or offers us some moral. Despite everything, however, we remain a little too much on his appetite at the end of the film.
It is nevertheless admirable to note to what extent Monia Chokri has developed in just two films a style of direction which is so specific to her (although the screenplay of Baby sitter is much more conventional than that of My brother’s blonde).
In particular by its direction of actors, its dialogues with succulent intellectual humor, its images distorted by glass, its scenes where our senses are uncomfortable and an aestheticism in tone-on-tone colors.
Destabilizing, daring and awkward at times (especially during a particular scene), Baby sitter is anything but a complacent film. It certainly makes us reflect on the uncontrollable and irrational aspect of desire.
But be warned, you might wonder, like Jean-Michel’s character, what degree you are in.
The answer: in several degrees, precisely.
Indoors
Comedy
Baby sitter
Monia Chokri, from a screenplay by Catherine Léger
With Monia Chokri, Patrick Hivon, Steve Laplante and Nadia Tereszkiewicz
1:30 a.m.