Babystar

Baby-faced 16-year-old Luca (Maja Bons) is the envy of every chronically online teen and, as the star of her parents’ family-oriented social-media empire, she has never had a day out of the limelight. The picture-perfect family enjoys — and lives off — the extravagant spoils of their brand deals and ad revenue, and is set to capitalize on Luca's personally trained AI model, a digital copy of her lucrative look.

But when she learns she will not be an only child for much longer, Luca’s flawless smile begins to falter. As a new sibling — who would be similarly subjected to the cloying realities of social-media stardom — looms, Luca discerns that the life constructed around her is just as curated as her Instagram grid, and she starts violently rejecting the only world she knows.

This debut feature from director Joscha Bongard is equal parts envy- and anxiety-inducing. Bongard harnesses his own work experience in social media to consider the darkness embedded in our attention economy, building a sense of surveillance with a creeping camera and multiscreen approach. Bons’ star-making performance as Luca lends an authentic horror to a teenager’s experience with family, intimacy, and fame, amid the satire of her deeply oblivious and uber-cringe parents.

Unique as her situation may seem, as Luca’s online identity crumbles, a universality emerges in her conflicted dependency on her parents and desire for escape. Desperate for a modicum of control and exhausted by her previous perfection, Luca’s slipping reality pushes her to take drastic measures, destroying her easy likeability online and, perhaps, IRL.

DOROTA LECH

Content advisory: crude content