French film maker Thomas Balmes has found a winning recipe for producing smiles: take four wildly contrasting cultural settings, add four very cute babies, and watch what happens during the first year of their lives. The result is the new movie Babies and you can get the feel of it in a trailer posted on YouTube.

The New York Times has a nice review as well. It concludes:

They grow, they learn, and they remind the rest of us of the astonishing power that is our common birthright. We are cast into the world as a bundle of reflexes, unable to focus our eyes, control our limbs or influence our environment in any way. Twelve months later we can walk, kiss, utter basic words and comprehend complicated utterances. It may be downhill from there: a movie called “Adolescents” or, heaven knows, “Grownups,” would hardly be as charming as “Babies.” But “Babies” just might restore your faith in our perplexing, peculiar and stubbornly lovable species.

I think this is one not to miss.

Update (June 2): Thanks to a tip from two alert readers I think my recommendation about this movie was premature. I am told "there is not only a lot of bare-chested nursing, but also a totally nude mother (American) in bed with her baby and in a hot tub with her baby". The website Kids in mind has a detailed "sex and nudity" and "violence and gore" analysis you might like to check out.