Review: When life takes a turn, it can be a ‘Nasty Baby’

“Nasty Baby,� writer-director Sebastián Silva’s follow-up to his spiky, funny “Crystal Fairy,� is a similarly pointed, loosely constructed (and ultimately surprising) look at navel-gazing hipsters. This time they’re in their own environment, in this case Brooklyn, where Freddy (Silva), a struggling video installation artist, and his sweet-faced boyfriend, Mo (Tunde Adebimpe), are trying to have a baby with the help of Polly (Kristen Wiig), their closest friend.

An endeavor of tenuous motivation — Freddy wants to also turn the experience into an art project — it’s nevertheless presented as emotionally sincere if comically haphazard. But Silva is after something slightly darker when his elite creatives leave their cozy brownstones and have awkward run-ins with a neighborhood figure called “The Bishop� (Reg E. Cathey), a homophobic, mentally ill squatter who, despite Cathey’s strong performance, is basically a stand-in for the harsh reality outside the trio’s bubble.

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The unscripted, naturalistically shot messiness of this urban snapshot is not always terribly interesting, and maybe that’s the point considering Silva’s third-act hard left into unexpected moral peril. In much the way “Crystal Fairy� blossomed when we were snapped out of our chuckling repulsion, “Nasty Baby� rights itself intriguingly when Silva pushes his characters into unknown territory and lifestyle is imposed upon by life.

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“Nasty Baby.�

MPAA rating: R for sexual content, some disturbing violence, language, drug use and graphic nude images.

Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes.

Playing: Sundance Sunset, West Hollywood.

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