With the right entrepreneurial spirit and an ability to hack the algorithm, you can create a media empire from the comfort of your own home. But what’s the cost of being chronically online and having every moment of your waking life harvested for clicks? The answer won’t surprise you, but the vibrant execution will in Joscha Bongard’s Babystar. As this pointed dramatic satire makes clear: if you feel bad about exceeding your allotted screen time, just be thankful you’re not the content creator in front of the camera.
The Sommers are a family of vloggers who share their joy and wisdom across social media on their account Our Bright Life. Sixteen-year-old Luca (Maja Bons) has had every milestone of her life — birth, potty training, her first period, her first kiss — documented in a video or podcast by her equally online parents Stella (Bea Brocks) and Chris (Liliom Lewald). Luca is the center of their world, and the core of the lucrative branding partnerships that pays for their chic and palatial modern home. But Luca begins to question everything when Stella and Chris decide to create a new revenue stream by having a baby. First jealous of a sibling taking away from her shine, soon Luca begins to worry about someone else having the choice to be off camera wrestled away from them the moment they’re born.
Luca decides to do the only thing she can think of — rebel. But raging against the parental machine has never quite looked like this. Armed with a credit card, she checks in for a month at a boutique hotel so she can figure out how to take back control of her online and offline life. She starts seeing the motorcycle riding Julie (Joy Ewulu), a woman she met during a commercial shoot. She rents herself out for clout as a daughter to another family. But most troubling, Luca starts confiding in the beta version of an AI chatbot of…herself. Her own avatar becomes her therapist, which in the era of people seeking analysis from ChatGPT, is a mortifying harbinger of things to come. When digital Luca advises human Luca, “You’re a brand, you just have to use it,” she finally comes up with a plan for the ultimate online disruption.
Eschewing the usual, 16:9, shaky digital look of many movies centered around social media, cinematographer Jakob Sinsel creates a beautiful and unique visual palette for the picture. Pastels abound across the Sommer home and especially in Luca’s hotel room, with some terrific work from production designers Martha Ines Brenner and Felicitas Antonia Puels. Sinsel allows the camera to hover and float down stretches of roadway each time Luca and Julie take a ride. It gives Babystar a contemporary feel, but not one rooted in swiping and scrolling, ensuring it won’t feel dated when Silicon Valley figures out the next way into our front cortex.
The film’s centerpiece sequence sees the Sommer family having dinner at a fancy restaurant with each of them capturing the evening on their phones. As Luca, Stella, and Chris chat, their dialogue is played over shots of each immaculately and sumptuously prepared dish. It all leads to a terrific, hilarious punchline: a smash cut to the family seated in their SUV, in the garage, silently eating McDonald’s. In a film that can occasionally be too didactic, this proves to be the perfect and sharpest shot across the bow. And ultimately, the best metaphor for the current age, as we eagerly consume high calorie slop in private, and push it offscreen when it’s time to present ourselves to the world.
Director: Joscha Bongard
Screenplay: Nicole Ruethers, Joscha Bongard
Cast: Maja Bons, Bea Brocks, Liliom Lewald, Joy Ewulu
Producers: Lisa Purtscher, Lotta Schmelzer
Cinematography: Jakob Sinsel
Production design: Martha Ines Brenner, Felicitas Antonia Puels
Costume design: Stephanie Zurstegge, Joan Besch
Editing: Emma Holzapfel, Wolfgang Purkhauser
Music: Jonas Vogler
Sound: Muhammet Can
Production companies: LiseLotte Films (Germany)
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Discovery)
In German
98 minutes
