American Baby (Rodnianski, 2025)
The opening shot of American Baby reminded me, thematically and formally, of the opening shot of Eyes Wide Shut.
Ellen Rodnianski’s local color fable about a pregnant Texas teenager begins with the silhouette of her partially clothed body with an emphasis on the distended belly. Stanley Kubrick’s film began, perhaps infamously, with an adult woman stepping out of her dress, standing mostly nude with her back to the camera.
I hasten to add that I categorically do not mean there is anything salacious or sexualized about the opening of American Baby. If anything, there is a tinge of body horror in it as Oli (Abigail Pniowsky) stares in the mirror at what her body has morphed into as a result of one hasty and too casual decision. But both films present the taboos around which their respective narratives will revolve as casual facts. American Baby will flashback from its opening to explain how we got to that opening shot, but it is consistently more interested in the reactions to Oli’s pregnancy than it is in the reasons for it.
I saw American Baby before the 2026 American midterm elections, when Texas, long thought to be the epicenter of a certain kind of political conservatism and religious fundamentalism, was revealed to be a bit more socially and sociologically complex than our stereotypes of it. If the film distinguishes itself from any other teen pregnancy saga, it does so by giving attention to setting. The America that Oli navigates is, in some ways, a maddeningly hypocritical one. The restrictions against abortion that made her consider fleeing Texas in order to take care of her pregnancy are contrasted to the maddening refusals to provide any personal or social assistance to the teen so desperately in need of it. The church that Oli’s mother is a part of expresses more concern for abstract Christians suffering on the other side of the world than those in need of neighborly love. The father of the teen that impregnated her begrudgingly gives her some money but threatens that he will not let her or their joint mistake ruin his life. Her female peers offer some help but also recognize their own socially vulnerable status and how it makes distancing themselves from a friend in need the safer choice.
Equally conflicted but more ambiguous is Oli’s mother. She holds as a matter of faith that there is only one Christian and acceptable response to her daughter’s pregnancy even as her own ties to her church and her faith are threatened by how others respond to Oli’s condition.
It is neither a profound nor original critical insight to point out that the title American Baby refers as much to Oli as it does to the unborn child she carries in her womb. The cycles of young motherhood, single motherhood, and distressed motherhood are depressingly intertwined here, and it is impossible to not reflect on the ways that the title subtly yet pointedly underscores that that this story, however generic, keeps playing out in America generation after generation. Perhaps systems and cultures, not just individuals, are known by their fruit. What does it say about America that it keeps handing down from generation to generation the same mix of puritanical self-righteousness and hard indifference?
While this story is familiar, I keep circling back to the matter-of-fact way it is presented. I am used to versions of this story where the young mother is idealized and society villainized. I am used to ones where the pregnant teen is a cautionary tale rather than an object of empathy. I am used to the perspective the authors or auteurs are pushing framing the story a bit more pointedly to lay the bulk of the blame on a convenient scapegoat. I am less used to a film about this subject matter than is so matter-of-fact. Not that it is bland or boring or without a heart. It just seems to recognize that the insemination of an American teenager is the first act of a bigger story and that the decision to give birth rather than abort should not be the only or final part of that story or the only part in which we take interest.
American Baby is set for a New York premiere in mid-November and a Los Angeles theatrical release in early December.
