Please Baby Please

Available on Mubi now

Amanda Kramer’s third feature Please Baby Please is a manic and vibrant tale of sexual awakening within the stuffy confines of 1950s America. Told through a visual palette that is broad enough to be indebted to both Blue Velvet and West Side Story, it is certainly a film that is as likely to challenge audiences as it is delight them.

The dialogue of Kramer’s screenplay, co-written with Noel David Taylor, frequently oscillates between the sort of abrasive diatribe one would expect to hear in a Scorsese picture and an academic tone that is altogether more complex and, dare I say it, somewhat polarising. Both Kramer and Taylor are clearly keen to study and dissect gender norms via their two central characters, who are played with bravado by an outstanding Andrea Riseborough and Harry Melling.

Whether Please Baby Please has anything particularly insightful to say about its underlying topic is debatable, with the film appearing to be more focused on its loud and aroused set pieces than anything else. This is not necessarily a bad thing of course, and Riseborough’s performance and oddities such as Demi Moore’s cameo make this an engaging slice of erotic cinema.

Still, given the complexities of the topic it seeks to engage with, one can’t help but feel Please Baby Please should be striving to say much more.