This is a rarely seen and unjustly neglected gem from the "swinging London" period of British film-making. It's subject matter – a nubile, underage teenage girl is adopted by a middle class family and becomes the erotic focus of father, son and mother – was certainly ahead of its time, and its amoral stance towards this material make it even more surprising. It was cut by the BBFC for its original UK cinema release (it is surprising it was granted a certificate at all) and its unflinching approach to its underage protagonist's sexual allure and responsiveness would get it into as much if not more trouble with the moral guardians of today.
The film begins with cross cutting Hayden's character Luci kissing a boy in front of a gaggle of her male and female schoolmates with the suicide of her mother (a debauched and distressing Diana Dors) in a hot bath with a razor. With her mother dead, Luci goes to live with her Mum's old flame Robert, played by Keith Barron, now a wealthy and successful London doctor. Luci's presence inflames both the teenage son of the doctor and his neglected wife, both of whom attempt to take advantage of Luci's disturbed state of mind (she is having nightmares and hallucinations featuring her dead mother) and Robert himself is also susceptible to the young nymphet's charms. But Luci is no innocent - she seems to know that sex is power and she plays the game for what its worth, hanging onto her position in the house through sheer female will and exploiting the desires of each member of the family when it suits her.
This portrait of Luci as colluding with those who would pray on her is troubling, but psychologically acute. Luci is both powerless, disturbed and the off-spring of a Mother who clearly (we learn in flashbacks) was no sexual wallflower. Luci is very much the product of her background, one of financial and emotional poverty, and so is rather more sympathetic than the spoilt middle-class folk whose fantasy figure of attraction and repulsion she is forced by circumstance to be. The film ostensibly looks like one of those dramas in which a cuckoo comes in to disturb a nest, but in actuality the middle-class family was always already deeply divided and she but acts as a catalyst which brings the ruptures to the surface. There is a suggestion that Luci has been sexualised before we meet her – her mother's burly lover hangs around her house both before and after the suicide & the cruel laughter from mother and lover in the flashback where Luci catches them at it suggests that he was also involved with Luci, the mother rubbing her sexual competitiveness with her daughter in the poor child's face. This reading of the film makes sense of those moments where Luci responds to improper, aggressive advances in inappropriate situations – the black man in the nightclub, the groper in the cinema, the louts in the rowboat. She also flirts heavily with Robert's friend, a depressing old lecher played by Dick Emery who acts as a sort of Clare Quilty figure, embodying Robert's worst knowledge about himself.
Baby Love is brilliantly put together, using a roaming camera which constantly prowls around the characters hoping to catch them as some sordid thing and fast editing offering us glimpses of impressionist moments from each situation. It seems extraordinary that the film was made over 40 years ago – it makes most teenage drama now look like punch-pulling chicken feed.
The film begins with cross cutting Hayden's character Luci kissing a boy in front of a gaggle of her male and female schoolmates with the suicide of her mother (a debauched and distressing Diana Dors) in a hot bath with a razor. With her mother dead, Luci goes to live with her Mum's old flame Robert, played by Keith Barron, now a wealthy and successful London doctor. Luci's presence inflames both the teenage son of the doctor and his neglected wife, both of whom attempt to take advantage of Luci's disturbed state of mind (she is having nightmares and hallucinations featuring her dead mother) and Robert himself is also susceptible to the young nymphet's charms. But Luci is no innocent - she seems to know that sex is power and she plays the game for what its worth, hanging onto her position in the house through sheer female will and exploiting the desires of each member of the family when it suits her.
This portrait of Luci as colluding with those who would pray on her is troubling, but psychologically acute. Luci is both powerless, disturbed and the off-spring of a Mother who clearly (we learn in flashbacks) was no sexual wallflower. Luci is very much the product of her background, one of financial and emotional poverty, and so is rather more sympathetic than the spoilt middle-class folk whose fantasy figure of attraction and repulsion she is forced by circumstance to be. The film ostensibly looks like one of those dramas in which a cuckoo comes in to disturb a nest, but in actuality the middle-class family was always already deeply divided and she but acts as a catalyst which brings the ruptures to the surface. There is a suggestion that Luci has been sexualised before we meet her – her mother's burly lover hangs around her house both before and after the suicide & the cruel laughter from mother and lover in the flashback where Luci catches them at it suggests that he was also involved with Luci, the mother rubbing her sexual competitiveness with her daughter in the poor child's face. This reading of the film makes sense of those moments where Luci responds to improper, aggressive advances in inappropriate situations – the black man in the nightclub, the groper in the cinema, the louts in the rowboat. She also flirts heavily with Robert's friend, a depressing old lecher played by Dick Emery who acts as a sort of Clare Quilty figure, embodying Robert's worst knowledge about himself.
Baby Love is brilliantly put together, using a roaming camera which constantly prowls around the characters hoping to catch them as some sordid thing and fast editing offering us glimpses of impressionist moments from each situation. It seems extraordinary that the film was made over 40 years ago – it makes most teenage drama now look like punch-pulling chicken feed.