Baby, It's You


Photo Courtesy of the Sundance Film Festival

Filmmaker Anne Makepeace turns the camera on herself as she and her husband boldly document a tumultuous year spent in trying to conceive a child after forty. With time no longer on their side, she and her writer husband, Peter, subject themselves to a range of new technologies, including months of fertility drug injections, surgery to extract eggs, fertilization, and replacement of the fertilized eggs in Anne's uterus. As part of their story, we are introduced to their unconventional baby-boomer siblings. We travel from Utah to Appalachia to Canada to meet family members: a brother who's hoping to become a polygamist, another who lives a reclusive life on a goat farm, and a lesbian sister-in-law, who is coparenting a newborn with her partner.

Makepeace was raised in a Puritan-style New England family, where feelings were hardly expressed, let alone sex ever being discussed. She tries to come to terms with her past and conflicting emotions through talking to aging relatives.

Baby, It's You is a striking and uncompromising portrait of family and the unique bonds between its members. Makepeace's courage to share such a deeply personal experience in front of the camera is truly moving. Based on the events that take place during the year, it is clear the film evolved organically rather than following any sort of planned scenario, which gives it added impact. Rarely do we see such an open and honest portrayal throughout the emotional roller coaster of anticipation, disappointment, and hope that carries this determined couple along.

- Lisa Viola

Directed by: Anne Makepeace