Baby It's You

By Tom Keogh

John Sayles's third feature film was the exception that proved the rule about his need for total independence as a filmmaker. Sayles traded his final cut for studio funding, and the result was a movie that left him unhappy in its ultimate form. Nevertheless, Baby, It's You is full of dramatic elements and character nuances that are distinctively Saylesian (the director's screenplay is adapted from a novel by Amy Robinson), and the early-1960s New Jersey setting is clearly familiar territory for the Garden State's native son. Rosanna Arquette stars as Jill, a sweet, college-bound Jewish girl who develops an unlikely relationship with a macho Italian kid named "Sheik" Capodilupo (Vincent Spano). Sheik woos Jill, a girl from the good side of the tracks, with a certain determination, and while Sayles goes down this familiar path with a certain nostalgic glow, he has a larger story brewing beyond it--a story about relationships that never gel, about class assumptions, and about the painful, universal underpinnings of adolescence.

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