“Marrying a man who adores you and can give you anything in the world you ever dreamed about
“That’s my trouble. I’m such a fool. I go dreaming about the wrong things.”
Hedy Lamarr’s almost undecipherably poignant facial expression in her breakthrough film “Algiers” (1938) becomes the opening shot of Tyler-Marie Evans’ bittersweet debut feature film about teenage girls looking for happiness in “Pretty Babies” (2026), world-premiering at this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival.
The Hollywood allure is the pretext for a film that draws as much from the 90s indie cinema (the veteran Christine Vachon of the New Queer Cinema film fame -and a close collaborator of Todd Haynes- is one of the film’s producers) and the old, black-and-white Hollywood movies, not always aligning them properly. Yet, in the way that “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane” (1962, Robert Aldrich) puts a grotesque turn in the old Hollywood legends, “Pretty Babies” uses the two characters in the Aldrich film to send them back to Hollywood glamour -and face the consequences.
Marie (Emily Alyn Lind) and Luna (Sadie Stanley), two teenage girls who have dreams of being actresses, test the film song ‘I’ve written a letter to daddy’ as proof of their friendship. Cheap glitter, heavy make-up for the less prudish but more sentimentally exposed Luna; a straight blond face for the more conservatively raised Marie, who still dreams of a man to love, and a place to stay in Hollywood. When Marie’s Juilliard expectations are thwarted (and her first sexual experience turns out to be nothing but nice), a rebellion trip looks the best option for both. Unlike Bette Davis and Joan Crawford (and more like Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis), both girls end up on the road to the movie city, only to find out that penniless won’t lead them far enough.
Enter Gemma (Madelaine Petsch) and Sapphire (Ashley Benson), two radiant sex workers who convince them that the route to the Hollywood top goes via small, calculated (but profitable) sex work steps. Marie (reluctantly) and Luna (gracefully) bite the bullet. Even though “Pretty Babies” moves into the world of sex-for-pay, it’s not much interested in its lurid or dangerous details (some such scenes work as perfunctory as the sex the main characters have). The down-to-basics nature of the sex scenes and business is the converse of the Oscar-winning “Anora’s” (2024) slapstick intricacies. Yet one cannot help wondering whether this is only the film’s facade, and it’s treated like that.
The film is at its best in making the teenage Davis/Crawford label story work dramatically on its own, but devoid of all the camp undertones. In this area, the result is uneven: we sense Luna’s justified anger and frustration when Luna has to abandon her (temporarily?) for a beautiful beau (Elias Kacavas); we rarely detect Marie’s dream of connecting her desires to actions, even to her best friend. Her character becomes more of a distanced observer (she is also the film’s narrator) and less of an object of affection of any kind.
That said, Marie enjoys one of the more powerful scenes in the film: the one-way FaceTime phone call to her mum (when things have really gone bad and she has to face it by herself) reveals empathy at its best. Luna’s corresponding scene of rage at the face of Marie’s abandonment feels both true to the character and humane as well. Both Emily Alyn Lind and Sadie Stanley give the best of their distressed characters, who were essentially left on their own to grow up, bringing only their friendship and love as a safety net.
The film languishes in its archival feel, but it uses it as a back-and-forth, past-to-present mechanism in its editing. The camera never lingers on its characters’ bodies, but treats the erotic scenes as means to an end. Yet, the cinematography (Lauren Guiteras) cleverly embraces some dreamy-looking spots when Marie and her boyfriend navigate their joint world.
Music selections dare to put even Edith Piaf’s ‘Sous le ciel de Paris‘ in their armor (in a beautiful all-girlie scene). Despite its sex underbelly predicament, the film works as an ordinary, daytime chronicle of a road trip. It gets you quickly into the characters’ own troubles as problems to be solved -rather than shady situations to face.
It is educated enjoyment to watch “Pretty Babies,” whose characters still get this Davis/Crawford energy and the road trip never gets dreary, despite its well-trodden narrative arc. The film gets its story steps from disappointment to rebellion to quick settling down to the world of paid sex quite effortlessly. (Some distressing moments, on the other hand, that involve abuse seem to pass rather lightly).
While situated in the past, it gives some precious insights into how 21st-century teenage girls get inspired and get trapped by situations that still manage to numb their dreams without being life-threatening. “I’m yours, and you are mine” is the motto of the female buddy film and the anchor the two main characters go by. The film’s ending (bringing a closure to the original Hollywood dream) is equally well-placed.
Not all strands of the film work as intended, especially the need to combine a big childhood dream with characters who mostly use it as an excuse for an individual life never before lived on its own. Yet this fragility of purpose and the watering down of the Hollywood dream also work in the film’s favor, if you stop thinking about purpose. It is as if Bette Davis and Joan Crawford suddenly left aside their big past feud, and decided to go for a road trip, resuming their career path, knowing all the way down that this was never going to happen.
Read More: 10 Best Movies That Poignantly Explore Girlhood
Pretty Babies (2026) Movie Links: IMDb, Wikipedia, Letterboxd
Where to watch Pretty Babies
Credit: Source link