‘Baby Doe’ Review: In Jaw-Dropping Doc, Woman Who Gave Birth and Left Baby in the Woods Tells Her Story

It is the kind of story that can make headlines and quickly disappear: A young woman gives birth in a restroom and disposes of the newborn, having denied to herself that she was pregnant. Baby Doe turns one of those stories into an empathetic film that plays like a true crime documentary in which the question is not who did it, but why. In 1993, Gail Ritchey was 22 years old, living in a rural, conservative area of Ohio, when she gave birth and left her child, which she later said was stillborn, in the woods. The body was quickly found, but it wasn’t until 2019 that DNA identified Ritchey as the mother. She was then charged with murder. Director met her two years later, and has created a taut film full of startling moments, many from Ritchey herself and some from police video and news reports. Related Stories Baby Doe The Bottom Line Head-spinning and absorbing. Venue: SXSW Film Festival (Documentary Feature Competition)Director: Jessica Earnshaw 1 hour 40 minutes Earnshaw’s first feature was the highly praised (2020), a close-up look at a woman grappling with addiction, incarceration and the attempt to rebuild her life. A similar first-hand, sympathetic approach shapes Baby Doe. That intimacy is its greatest strength, as we hear Ritchey explain herself. It is also a limitation, which prevents the issue of pregnancy denial from registering in a way that goes beyond one person. But the film is constantly fascinating as it argues for compassion and understanding rather than harsh judgment about an unthinkable crime. Earnshaw’s tone is never polemical, but Baby Doe is definitely a work of advocacy, and her strategy of letting Ritchey and the people who judge her speak for themselves is largely effective. The biggest surprise of the film is Ritchey herself, now married to the father of the child she left in the woods, with whom she has three grown children. She is a soft-spoken, church-going middle-aged woman first seen holding her baby grandchild while playing a board game with her family. The most jaw-dropping moment, early in the film, shows police video of Ritchey’s arrest as she stands in her driveway. When the police ask if she knows why they are there, she calmly answers, “a baby that was left,” the passive voice both chilling in its detachment and convincing in its guilelessness and sincerity. Video from an interrogation room is even more head-spinning. After she has acknowledged leaving the child, the police investigators ask, “How many other times has this happened?” and she says, “One other time,” two years before. Earnshaw’s unobtrusive style lets that sit, followed simply by text that says the body of the first child was never found, that Ritchey told the police she remembered no noise or movement from either baby, and that because only one body was found she was charged with a single murder. The film follows Ritchey from there through to her trial, with seamless editing that creates an engaging narrative that allies viewers with Ritchey’s point of view. Her husband, Mark, and two of their children are interviewed in their middle-class home, testifying to Ritchey’s gentle nature and ordinary, everyday life. Mark says he was entirely unaware of the births of those first, dead children, but remains supportive. The most telling and convincing segments are between Ritchey and her lawyers, though. Such conversations are always suspect, as we’re obviously seeing only what the lawyers choose to reveal. But their questions to Ritchey are astute and her responses make it clear that she was in denial about her pregnancy and to some extent seems detached from it even as she goes to trial. At times even her lawyers are baffled by her eerily calm responses to their questions.  She took a pregnancy test, which was positive, yet says, “I don’t remember thinking that I was pregnant.” It can be wrenching to hear her. One of her lawyers says, “I need to get my head wrapped around this. This sounds so insane,” which is exactly the position viewers of the film are likely to start with. Earnshaw’s purpose is to take us beyond that confusion. In one crucial scene, a forensic psychologist tells Ritchey’s lawyer about research on women who refuse to let themselves acknowledge they are pregnant. The psychologist adds an important piece to the puzzle when she says that women who experience this are so troubled they act desperately when they give birth and, because the underlying psychological problem has never been solved, are likely to repeat that behavior. Ritchey fits that description. She was a member of a church youth group, devout and believing that sex before marriage was wrong, and disassociated herself from the reality of her pregnancies. The psychologist adds ballast, and Baby Doe would have been an even stronger film with a broader message if there had been more of those explanations. And little is said about Ritchey’s first child, a gap in the film. Ritchey is now in prison and we see the judge as he hands down a mandatory life sentence. He calls her behavior monstrous, while acknowledging the solid, respectable life she has lived since. “I can’t rationalize these two Gail Ritcheys,” he says. Maybe he meant to say “reconcile,” but “rationalize” is very much to the film’s point. What Ritchey did is beyond reason, coming from a deep psychological problem that this sharp, emotional documentary exposes.

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