Baby It’s You
In the 1970s and ’80s, there were a number of movies depicting romances between Jews and Gentiles. Films like “Annie Hall,” “The Way We Were” and “The Heartbreak Kid” reflected the fact that interfaith relationships — with all their complications and messiness — were becoming commonplace.
An early John Sayles film, “Baby It’s You,” looks at this trend from the perspective of teenagers in love, forced to deal not only with societal bias but also with exploding hormones. The action begins in a Trenton, N.J., high school, when honor student Jill Rosen (Rosanna Arquette) from an upper-middle-class Jewish family is attracted to a poor Italian American (Vincent Spano), who makes up in chutzpah what he lacks in academic acumen.
He goes by the name Sheik (after a brand of condom) and saunters through the school hallways dressed in impeccably tailored suits and ties like his hero Frank Sinatra. (Also like Sinatra, he may have some Mafia connections.) The early scenes between these two opposites feel achingly real, aided by a sweetly naturalistic performance by a very young Arquette and a portrayal by Spano that’s 80 percent swagger and 20 percent heartbreaking as he comes to realize that the differences between them may be insurmountable.
In his first film role, Matthew Modine captures the snobbishness of an Ivy Leaguer, and if you look quickly you’ll see Robert Downey Jr. as another snotty college student. — Ruthe Stein