Trading Up

By RICHARD CORLISS

BABY, IT'S YOU

Directed and Written by John Sayles

John Sayles is ambling toward Holly wood legitimacy. Author of award-winning short stories, screenwriter of such intelligent exploitation movies as The Lady in Red and Alligator, gifted writer-director of the no-budget Return of the Secaucus 7 and the low-budget Lianna, Sayles has traded up. His new film is being released by Paramount Pictures, was shot with a union crew, and is the first Sayles movie he has not edited on the kitchen table of his home in Hoboken, N.J. But Baby, It's You is not the traditional calling-card film of an ambitious young talent, shaping its dexterity to the restrictive demands of the horror or sci-fi genre. This movie, set in Trenton, N.J., in 1967 and loosely based on the teen-age experiences of Producer Amy Robinson, has the same Sayles eye for offbeat casting and off-the-shoulder comedy, the same ability to infiltrate the minds of charac ters from widely different social strata. Nothing has changed but the budget.

Jill Rosen (Rosanna Arquette) is bright, Jewish and just pretty enough to be told she has that Audrey Hepburn quality. "Sheik" Capadilupo (Vincent Spano) is Italian and shiftless, with Vaselined hair and a wardrobe that Giorgio Armani might have designed for Jimmy ("the Weasel") Fratianno. She loves rock 'n' roll, he loves Sinatra. She's going to Sarah Lawrence, he's going nowhere. They have nothing in common but an over whelming love for her. But something in Jill thrills to the troubles Sheik gets himself into and to the threat he poses to her middle-class dreams. So she allows this Romeo-and-Coquette dalliance to ripen into an attachment that is foolish, masochistic, elemental.

The story and milieu are familiar enough, in movies from The Graduate to Diner, to constitute a new American genre. But whenever Baby, It's You starts to become rambling or folkloric, Sayles and his charming young actors find a way to twist or energize the cliches. You can catch a glisten of moisture in the eye of an "easy," misused girl who's too proud to cry; or contemplate Jill's half-embarrassed smile when she goes dancing cheek to Sheik; or fall in with the gliding camera that circles the young lovers during their first sexy kiss. Sayles is, as always, wise and fair to his mismatched characters. His movies look as if they were made by a fly on the wall that had an advanced degree in psychology. -- By Richard Corliss This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.