‘Beba’ Review: Rebeca Huntt’s Life May Be a Work in Progress, but Her Debut Shines Bright Like a Diamond
variety.comPeter Debruge Chief Film CriticHow many millennial cine-memoirs does the world need? I might have answered that question differently before “Beba.” As a generation of TikTok and Instagram users seek still more ways to overshare, it’s only a matter of time before we’re drowning in personal essay films.
Having seen what Rachel Huntt can do with the format, however, I say, “Bring ’em on!” Her film gives me hope — if only her docu-inclined peers could have the same self-awareness and intuition when shaping their experience.An insightful, engaging and all-around affirmational auto-portrait from an Afro-Latina New Yorker with an ear for poetry and an eye for the ineffable, “Beba” never questions its own right to exist. “You are now entering my universe.
I am the lens, the subject, the authority,” she says at the outset, betraying a thoughtful, liberal-arts-college sensibility. “I carry an ancient pain that I struggle to understand,” she continues, confronting head-on the angst she feels as a woman of color, knowing full well that those with the easiest access to microphones and cameras will accuse her of whining, of playing the victim.
For a film like this to work, its creator can’t hide her flaws — which is saying something in a medium where movie stars so often do the opposite, insisting they be shot only from their flattering side or nixing scenes that make them seem weak.
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