Incognegro

Pariah

Crit

And the award for Trailer That Does Its Film the Worst Disservice goes to . . .

Seriously, I saw the trailer a zillion times, but even the first time it made the film seem like one that relies for your favorable response on Standing for the Right Things--gay-friendly, black-friendly, struggling-youngster-friendly--rather than on telling a compelling story compellingly. Furthermore, the high school "poetry," as cut into the trailer, earned those ironic quotes, full of the sort of vague, bland, abstract language for which school "literary magazines" have been notorious since before I was writing that sort of crap for them.

So even though the reviews have been almost unanimously positive, I went in skeptical, but the film won me over within minutes--maybe the first time it made me laugh, for that was another thing about the trailer: it was unremittingly serious, and dark, and sorrowful. Well, it's a serious film with plenty about it that's dark and sorrowful, but it finds time as well to be light, sweet, warm, even funny. In other words, human.

Alike (Adepero Oduye), aka Lee (though never to her father), is 17 and would be out but for the homophobia of her complacently middle-class parents; mom (Kim Wayans) has a Bible up her butt, and dad (Charles Parnell) is in denial more on general principles. Mom is also meekly subservient, with an undercurrent of anger that needs a vent, all the worse for her gay daughter; dad, meanwhile, is a philanderer with love for his daughters but none left for his wife. "Out" is more than one goal.

Writer-director Dee Rees, whose IMDb photo makes her look about 17 herself, has set a high bar for the next coming-of-lesbian-age story, and anyone making such a film could do worse than study this one.