假如比尔街可以作证

《月光男孩》导演巴里·杰金斯日前敲定新片，他将把知名作家詹姆斯·鲍德温的小说《假若比尔街能够讲话》(IfBealeStreetCouldTalk)搬上大银幕，故事设定于上世纪70年代的纽约哈林区，主角是一对刚订婚的年轻情侣芬尼(Fonny)和蒂什(Tish)。芬尼被诬告强奸，而妇女怀孕的蒂什将四处奔走寻找证据证明丈夫的清白。梅根·埃里森创立的安纳普尔纳将投资本片，也将和《月光男孩》制片公司PlanB、杰金斯本人的Pastel工作室一同制作本片，10月开拍。

Being the devil’s advocate and against his better judgment, your reviewer is considerably more underwhelmed by Barry Jenkins’s Oscar champion MOONLIGHT (2016), which is pervaded by a charmingly nostalgic aroma, but the central relationship falls on the cagey side as if the filmmaker is too wary about its daring subject matter. Ergo, a cautious eye is set on his follow-up IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK, visualizing James Baldwin’s seminal novel, a ‘70s Harlem love story impeded by the societal iniquity and inveterate racism, the story is on the ever familiar path (for the sake of the woke-ism), two young black people in love, with a baby expecting, their future blueprint is all but rosy, still, injustice catches up with them, the would-be father is wrongly prosecuted for a crime he never commits, why? blame it on his dark pigmentation and the corrupt legal system, if all above sounds familiar, because it is.

While it is formulaic fare down the storyline, Jenkins gins up the narrative with a non-linear composition that pinpoints many a crucial moments of the pairs’endearing relationship. Tish (Layne), a 19-year-old perfume saleslady, and her childhood sweetheart Fonny (James), a carpenter and budding sculptor, fall in love in the most natural way, certainly not everyone in their families are contented with their union, especially Fonny’s God-fearing mother Alice (a terrifically charged Aunjanue Ellis). Before they can tie the knot, Fonny is identified by Victoria Rogers (Rios), a Puerto Rico Ed immigrant abetted by the evil racist cop Officer Bell (Skrein, flaunting a veritable villainous smugness), as her rapist, although short of physical evidence (the distance between the crime scene and Fonny’s location of that time is too oceanic to cover in such a brief span), Fonny is incarcerated and waits for trial, and at that moment, Tish finds out she already has a bun in the oven.

Two families’ concerted effort to turn the tables of the lovebirds’ misery is weaved into the fragmentary threads of the pair’s prosaic life before the aggrieving incident: their tentative first sex and their growing bond after the earth moved; looking for an apartment and envisioning their own place called home; a brief reunion between Fonny and his old friend Carty (a poignant Brian Tyree Henry), whose didactic outpourings unsubtly foreshadow Fonny’s own impending plight. That said, the ineffacable vibes are solemn and desperate, it is a matter-of-fact account of botched happiness, a bit heavy on its self-seriousness.

Our two young protagonists, in spite of their expressive miens, lack in distinct characteristics in the victimized default mode, their tired images are too good, too rigid, too dignified so that Jenkins can shove his opprobrium down any guilt-driven audience’s throats, only if he could have known human nature all too well, because usually that kind approach scarcely works, the guilty party has been conditioned to unleash an intrinsic defense mechanism to stave off any burden on their submersed conscience.

Regina King, who plays Tish’s mother, wins the coveted Oscar BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS for portraying a stouthearted mother who pulls all the stops in fighting the corner of her daughter and future son-in-law, her motherly support is predictably heartwarming, but it is her sterling commanding presence during a jaunt in Puerto Rico that seals the deal (especially when facing a coyly contrived, unrecognizable Pedro Pascal, she is solicitous, distraught but also unostentatiously defiant), although King is consistently excellent throughout her career, it is somehow rewarding that she is the token recipient of Oscar love for the picture, which is too politically correct to be snubbed by the Academy’s collective mindset, although one can twig why it wasn’t a bigger player in the game.

Jenkins craftily douses the film in the bisexual lighting, that offsets the drabness and pedestrian sight of its period setting, a similar ploy can be discerned in his girlfriend Lulu Wang’s THE FAREWELL, meantime, Nicholas Britell’s Oscar-nominated string-heavy score surpasses the usual accompaniment role as it is full of momentum and vigor, that arguably becomes the most extraordinary feat of this self-serious, stylishly palatable, empathy-ridden tale-of-woe that might give movie pundits a pause about Jenkins’ hitherto overvalued legacy.

referential entries: Jenkins’ MOONLIGHT (2016, 7.6/10); Dee Rees’ PARIAH (2011, 7.5/10); Lulu Wang’s THE FAREWELL (2019, 7.8/10).