Baby, It's You

This is an early John Sayles film, taking place around the 60s. I've enjoyed several of Sayles' films, with The Secret of Roan Inish, which was a departure from his style and content, probably my favorite.

Baby, It's You concerns a highschooler, Jill (Rosanna Arquette), who is taken with the new boy, an Italian-American known as Sheik (Vincent Spano). He’s a little mobsterish, which both attracts and repels Jill (at least she pretends it repels her in public). But Sheik is aggressive in pursuing her, he acts gentlemanly and dresses well, and has some uncouth/ignorant behavior but at the same time understands how to woo a lady. When she complains he ignores her on a date, he says he wanted to go slow to show he wasn’t just going to go for the sex first, although we come to see that is an urge he is suppressing for her.


Due to Jill’s indecisiveness on Sheik’s importance to her, his increasing pressure to have sex, and to her continued education once they graduate, the pair break off slowly and re-meet, but realize they have grown too far apart. She is trying to grow into an adult in college but not fitting in as well as she wants, while he, with no real skills, works in a restaurant with dashed dreams of being the next Frank Sinatra. Their relationship is a bright-burning flame that is extinguished.

I liked the character of Sheik, he was charismatic and I could see how girls would go for him. I would like to see a sequel showing where these two characters went with their lives, especially with Vietnam coming up in the timeline.

I thought Arquette played a drunk really well in a scene, which I think is a hard thing to act convincingly.

Like other earlier John Sayles films it has a good period feel. There are some bit parts played by other up and coming actors of that day that you would probably recognize.