Rage lurks beneath artsy ‘Beale Street’
True love endures, but cannot obscure injustice, in director Barry Jenkins’ big-hearted if slightly patience-testing follow-up to his Oscar winner “Moonlight.” An adaptation of a James Baldwin novel, “If Beale Street Could Talk” follows a young couple — Tish (KiKi Layne) and Alonzo, nicknamed Fonny (Stephan James) — in 1970s Harlem, struggling against omnipresent racism but still aglow with the light of new romance. Lifelong friends, they’ve finally become a couple when Fonny, a woodworker, is arrested for a crime he didn’t commit just as Tish discovers she’s pregnant with their first child. Jenkins toggles between the budding relationship to the days of Fonny’s incarceration.
Jenkins is a master of cinematic portraiture, but he’s so captivated by the magic of a moment — even a single image, like cigarette smoke swirling around one of Fonny’s carvedwood sculptures — that he sometimes forgets he’s got an audience expecting a plot. “Beale Street” is never less than righteous but can feel a little slow. Shots of the lovers gazing at each other — gleefully in the middle of a city side street, after getting their first apartment together, or through the glass of a prison visitor’s window — are meaningful in small doses but can drag. Thankfully, Layne, in her feature film debut, is a revelation — her face conveying what the reserved Tish often doesn’t bring herself to say.
James (Amazon’s series “Homecoming,” “Selma”) is equally good. I just found myself wishing the couple’s scenes together were less burnished; as pure as their love is, and as noble their struggle in the face of those who would cut it down, the pair can’t help being a little one-note.
“Beale Street” is at its best when it opens up to the network of people around Tish and Fonny, particularly her indomitable mother Sharon (Regina King). Tish’s working-class family is taken aback but ultimately unfazed by the 19-year-old’s pregnancy, unlike Fonny’s prissy sisters and holy-roller mother (Aunjanue Ellis), who spits condescension at Tish, Tish’s parents (Colman Domingo plays her fa- ther) and Tish’s take-no-s--t sister Ernestine (Teyonah Parris).
Brian Tyree Henry brings the film roaring to life as Fonny’s friend Daniel, recently released from prison on a trumped-up charge. As they sit at a kitchen table talking plans — Fonny, fed up with American bigotry, yearns for him and Tish to leave the country — it becomes clear that the once-vivacious Daniel has been deeply traumatized by his prison time.
“Beale Street” is one of the most lavishly shot films of the year; the bright hues of its period clothing and furniture leap off the screen. But as in “Moonlight,” Jenkins always comes back to faces, and he’s working with a wildly talented cast that is up to the task of that photographic closeness. Deeply felt, with a nonstop, wiry frisson of frustration and rage, it’s worth taking the time to savor. “Unbow your head, sister,” Ernestine tells Tish. It’s a powerful message. Running time: 119 minutes. Rated R (profanity, nudity, sex). Now playing.