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‘Sugar Babies’ Review: A Louisiana TikToker Hopes to Flirt Her Way Out of Poverty in a Surface-Level Portrait
Rachel Fleit's documentary 'Sugar Babies' commendably doesn't judge its young, callow subjects, but it doesn't really scrutinize them either.
The flighty mindset of hyper-online living proves an uneasy solution to the rough gravity check of small-town poverty in “ Sugar Babies,” Rachel Fleit ‘s documentary portrait of young, hard-up Louisiana women getting by on their wits, wiles and heavily TikTok-filtered faces. Given the hooky subject matter promised by its title, though often set aside for more general slice-of-life observation, “Sugar Babies” may find further docfest slots to follow its competition premiere at Sundance, but feels too slender and discursive for significant exposure beyond the festival circuit. Sociopolitical context, meanwhile, is delivered via jarring insertions of stark factual title cards and newscast footage regarding former Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards’ repeatedly thwarted efforts to raise the minimum wage — a subject that Autumn herself never discusses directly, even as it defines her plight.
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