MovieChat Forums > Bébé(s) (2010) Discussion > Another gender error: Ponijao is a girl!

Another gender error: Ponijao is a girl!

posted 14 years ago by ameliah
26 replies | jump to latest

I hadn't checked the "Babies" page in a while, so I was glad to see that IMDB had corrected Bayar's gender. But now Ponijao is listed as playing "himself." WRONG! If you need proof, here's a quote from Thomas Balmes in an interview in Time magazine:

"In Namibia, Ponijao had an amazing energy. All the other babies were having big naps for three to five hours a day. Very quickly Ponijao was not napping at all. So for like 12 hours we were absolutely running everywhere. I was dead exhausted after three weeks of shooting. It was quite warm and you had to follow her where she was running. She was the most alive in that sense."

[–] nicole_michelle2001 14 years ago

See the movie. Ponijao is definitely boy--with boy parts!

[–] 14 years ago

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[–] mwm-2 14 years ago

I saw it this weekend -- Ponijao is a boy with boy parts that he plays with. Pretty obvious.

[–] bacci40 14 years ago

she is a girl

which was why she was so interested in playing doctor

[–] lldeland 14 years ago

Ummm so much a boy. Get glasses.

[–] Fan_ever 14 years ago

Maybe you saw a male baby, and mistook it for Ponijao?

Ben Grimm forever!

[–] Virginiana 14 years ago

That was Ponijao's older brother playing with his boy parts. They're obviously very close in age, so I can see how you got confused.

Of the four babies, all are girls except Bayar, the Mongolian infant.

[–] lovelyx06 14 years ago

No, Bayar is a girl. Look at the end credits.

edit: i'm so confused. Bayar looks like a straight girl in the end of the movie - especially in the bonus features. she has shoulder length hair lol

But anyway I think you're bionic & I don't think you're beautiful, I think you're beyond it.

[–] jones8557-1 14 years ago

She's a girl! Bayar is the only boy!

[–] 14 years ago

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[–] jones8557-1 14 years ago

I looked at the part where the mother is braiding an other child hair and there are no boy parts!

[–] dorothea_1981 13 years ago

Your right Bayar is the only boy.
The long hair is a cover up. The mongolian belive that ghosts will take the baby if they realise that it is a boy. So they let their boys hair grow till they around five years old. then so they belive the ghosts can´t harm them anymore.

Well, at last that´s what they said in an other documentry

[–] 13 years ago

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[–] Kalpurnia 11 years ago

agree

[–] cvezzo 14 years ago

She clearly has a vagina. She did grab her brother's penis, though, maybe that's the baby you're thinking of?

[–] sinceimetjc 14 years ago

She's a girl. For about half of the movie I thought she was a boy, but I think I was mistaking her for the other baby that she was always around. I realized she was a girl when she was crawling and I saw that she definitely did not have boy parts hanging down.

"The hideousness of that foot will haunt my dreams forever."

[–] sassyxo 14 years ago

Yep, Ponijao is a girl. For those who think she isn't, read this article:

http://focusfeatures.com/article/babies___meet_the_parents

Clearly Ponijao's mom refers to the child as "she." Ponijao's mom says, "Ponijao is [now] two-and-a-half years old, trying to be three years old. She likes to dance, all day, playing with other kids. We eat fish with her, porridge and milk."

I sent an application to IMDB to change their error. :)

[–] jean-gove 14 years ago

Ponijao is a girl. You can see girl parts when her mother bends her over her knee at about half through the film. She also has a girly face. The bigger boy who plays with his parts is probably an older brother.

[–] RoseLuca 14 years ago

There is another baby close in age she plays with all the time. They do look similar with very similar hair (or lack of) and are of similar size.

[–] Voilee 14 years ago

Yes, you are correct. Ponijao is indeed a girl. As the others said, she is often playing with her (slightly) older brother, as well as another baby who is a little older from the village (also a boy) . . . we see this especially when the African mother is feeding the two children simultaneously near the beginning of the film (with a 3rd toddler trying to but in, but getting smacked away).

Bayar, the Mongolian infant, is a boy. He is shown, near the beginning of the film, peeing freely and you can see his penis quite clearly. He has long hair later, because this is Mongolian custom. They shave the boys head when he reaches a certain age (you see the Mongolian mother doing this to her older boy near the beginning of the film.)

Great film! I love how it's shown from the babies perspective!

[–] Aswinning_11 13 years ago

If I remember well you can see in some scenes that the definitely has no "thing".

[–] strawberry97c5 13 years ago

http://focusfeatures.com/article/babies___meet_the_parents?film=babies

If you read the interviews, ponijao's mother talks about her having her own children some day and bayars mother says He wasnt sure if it was Him or not in the movie

[–] erin375 13 years ago

Yeah, I think you're right, Ameliah--Ponijao does seem to b a girl. At least, according to the interview with her mother that Focus Features put on their site.

[–] Stirchley 13 years ago

If you stream the movie on Netflix.com, 27 minutes into the movie we see clearly that the Namibian baby is a girl.

[–] obi582 12 years ago

I think the director let it open-ended so the auidience can come up with the own conclusions :P

[–] ninetyone 12 years ago

Wow, I'm really surprised that people are talking about this. It's so obvious that Bayar is a boy and Ponijao is a girl. You can tell throughout the movie!

"As for me, all I know is that I know nothing."