The tone is set, ninjababy don’t do lace. And what a refresh! Finally we are told about pregnancy and motherhood without sweeteners and without falling into the schoolboy way surprise pregnancy.
This is Rachel. Rakel lives in Oslo. She’s messy, immature, excessive, and full of wild ideas. She drinks too much when she goes out and likes to spice up her beer with hallucinogenic mushrooms on occasion. She dreams of becoming an astronaut, a beer taster, a globetrotter, a lumberjack or even an illustrator. Mainly illustrator. But these more or less realistic dreams go up in smoke when her roommate, Ingrid, points out to her that she has gained breasts, that she swallows liters of fruit juice that she does not usually drink and that she has developed an exaggerated sense of smell. Yes, Rakel is pregnant. Finally no “Aikido-Mos” with whom she spent a night a few weeks ago. To her great despair, she is already six and a half months pregnant. Therefore, the father turns out to be “Dick Jesus” and any abortion is impossible. What to do then? That’s the question that Rakel tosses around in her head, but a little baby ninja, the penciled-in incarnation of her future child, slips out of her imagination to torment her even more.
The caustic and uncompromising humor of illustrator Inga H. Sætre, who wrote the graphic novel from which the film is based, is perfectly rendered by rising screenwriter Johan Fasting and hits the mark every time. But more importantly, both have been realistic in character development and what they say. Thus, the conversations between Rakel and Ingrid transposed to the image are frank and authentic. They talk about their periods, sex, excrement, everything, without an ounce of delicacy, sending waltzing stereotypes about femininity.
Obvious, but not acquired
Femininity on the mat, but big winner feminism. If there is one thing that stands out from ninjababy, it is the right of women to choose the life they want to lead without being judged. Whether it’s the right to have as many one-night relationships as they want, to abort or keep their baby, the right not to feel like a mother, to doubt… and many other things that should be obvious, but are not yet acquired.
Always having recourse to humor to defuse the most serious situations (making us laugh on the subject of the denial of pregnancy, it had to be done), the film offers a reflection as deep as it is deeply necessary on the inequalities between men and women. Rakel’s crisp extremist discourse on contraception swings its feet in the bitter dish of male-female inequity in the matter. We won’t go so far as to support his proposal to have all teenagers with male genitalia undergo a vasectomy, but the debate for more equality is on.
And if Sætre and Fasting left the gloves in the locker room for substance, director Yngvild Sve Flikke does the same for form. Through its refined staging, the choice of harsh lighting and sober decors, it brings all our attention back to the most important thing: the psychological development of the characters. From Rakel who believes that a baby ninja has secretly slipped into his belly to ruin his life to “Dick Jesus” who wants to go back to bed now that the damage is done, this gallery of characters with a vitriolic patter mischievously explores the twists and turns of pre-parental panic. Endowed, Rakel at the head of the line, with what Bridget Jones has so rightly baptized “verbal diarrhea”, they give themselves no limits to push to the end a more intellectual reflection than it seems. They are also all the more endearing.
Fiercely raw and devilishly joyful, ninjababy does its best to get us out of the narrow and tiresome straitjacket of the films on motherhood that we have been served up to now. To be enjoyed without tweezers or moderation.