Whoa! This week’s WTF moment comes from the Chilean director Sebastián Silva, responsible for the Losey-esque class satire The Maid and the disturbing thriller Magic Magic. This is a strange, unclassifiable piece of work, bordering on craziness and incoherence but acted and directed with such quiet vehemence that it has some interest. (Interestingly, the co-producer is Pablo Larraín, whose eerie satire The Club is in UK cinemas.) Nasty Baby attempts to cross social satire with extreme confrontation (a la Straw Dogs) and finally noir farce. Silva plays Freddy, a conceptual artist in Brooklyn working on a video piece featuring him playing a baby, in which he also casts his partner, Mo (Tunde Adebimpe). He is donating sperm to their friend Polly, played by Kristen Wiig, who is longing for an actual baby. Wiig sells this non-comedy role with complete conviction. But the trio find themselves menaced by a local homeless guy called the Bishop (Reg E Cathey), and the situation reaches a crisis just as Freddy tries to sell his completed work to a gallery owner (Neal Huff), whose reaction is as bizarre as anything in the film. What on earth does this add up to? Maybe not much. If there is an experimental right to fail, then Silva is entitled to it.
