In Baby Kate, filmmaker Jennifer Lafleur exposes the act of “moving on” as a fragile, necessary fiction. A profoundly sobering exploration of the architecture of loss, the film transforms a routine meeting to sign divorce papers into a high-stakes excavation of a shared history. It is an intimate, “vibey” drama that understands that while a marriage can be dissolved, the parenthood of a lost child remains an indelible, haunting imprint.
Grief is a ghost that refuses to be evicted, no matter how many legal papers you sign.
The narrative hook is a masterclass in subverting expectations. We open on a tender morning ritual between a mother and her daughter—a sequence rendered with such “raw authenticity” that the revelation of its impossibility feels like a physical blow. When David (Jason Ritter) arrives to meet Rebecca (Lafleur), the audience is forced to realize we have been inhabiting Rebecca’s internal landscape, a world where their daughter is still a lingering, tactile presence.
The film earns its emotional weight through its two lead performances. Jason Ritter, a seasoned actor known for his nuanced, empathetic work in Parenthood and Girls, brings a complex, defensive energy to the role of David. Ritter cleverly plays against his “nice guy” persona, portraying a man so desperate to outrun his trauma that he is willing to negotiate away his own daughter’s legacy to start over.
Opposite him, Lafleur delivers a performance of staggering intensity. Having established herself as a mainstay of the indie circuit in projects like the Duplass Brothers’ The Do-Deca-Pentathlon and HBO’s Big Little Lies, she here demonstrates a remarkable ability to command a film’s silence. As both director and lead, she navigates the “pressure cooker” of the dining room with a deliberate pacing, knowing exactly when to let her character’s composure slip. The professional history between Ritter and Lafleur—frequent collaborators in the independent film community—lends their interactions a naturalism that feels discovered rather than scripted.
Visually, DP Shaheen Seth employs an observational style that positions the audience as a voyeur to an emotional unraveling. The visual language is grounded in the mundane—the “vacation cereal,” the half-packed boxes—which only heightens the surreal ache of Kate’s “secret nest” in the closet. Lafleur resists moral simplicity, allowing the characters to sit in their “floating awkwardness” until the final, devastating revelation.
What makes Baby Kate such a moving watch is its refusal to offer tidy closure. It recognizes that ruin grows in the spaces where love is no longer spoken. The final image—Rebecca seeking solace among the clothes of a life that no longer exists—is as visually mesmerizing as it is a genuine “gut-punch” of sincerity.
Having stoped at notable stops on the festival circuit including SXSW, Baby Kate cements Jennifer Lafleur as a filmmaker with a clear command of technical craft and a gift for turning the most spectacular human bonds into nuanced, unforgettable allegories.
