“I’m in my 40s, so it’s really hard to get pregnant the fun way,” explains award-winning filmmaker Anne Makepeace at the start of BABY, IT’S YOU, an unflinchingly intimate account of the tumultuous year she and her husband, Peter Behrens, spent undergoing modern fertility procedures. Poignant, thoughtful, and often amusing, the film examines how the couple’s efforts affected not only their marriage, but their family relationships past and present.
Chronicling the couple’s foray into the “brave new science” of reproductive technology, BABY, IT’S YOU follows Makepeace and Behrens from their most intimate moments to tense scenes in the operating room. But their roller-coaster ride through the labyrinth of the fertility maze is only part of the story. With a cast that includes the couple’s unconventional baby-boomer siblings, BABY, IT’S YOU also paints an absorbing portrait of a generation that is creating families in ways their parents would never have dreamt.
Raised in a conservative family in the early 1950’s, Makepeace was taught never to discuss sexual or emotional matters. In tense and touching conversations with her elderly New England relatives, she reveals a painful 30-year-old confession that has made motherhood unthinkable for her—until now. “I had to go into a dark and terrifying personal place to confront my demons and uncover a secret I held for a very long time,” says Makepeace. “Only after that did I feel I could be a good mother.”
By the film’s end, many choices are made, and life has changed for everyone involved: a sudden death is mourned; a marriage is celebrated; and new family bonds are forged. As more people turn to modern reproductive technology to enable them to have children, BABY, IT’S YOU tackles the timely issues of infertility with candor and grace and offers a fresh, touching exploration of new definitions of family in the 90’s.
