The woman just wants to be with her man. That, above all else and beneath the pomp and the circumstance, is the crux of writer/director Tayarisha Poe’s sophomore effort. The filmmaker burst onto the scene in 2020 with the endlessly inventive and idiosyncratic Selah and the Spades, and she doesn’t seem to have slowed her sense of individualism or verve for The Young Wife, an exercise in pure style that also resonates as a whole lot more than an exercise. The ensemble of this drama/comedy hybrid, which also dips into surrealism and adds a sci-fi flavor for good measure, is deep and wide, with its every cast member adding something memorable – whether on their own or in conjunction with a screen partner – to the proceedings. The production is designed with such genuine attitude that each scene is even more invigorating to watch than the last.
Great film structure can be easily overlooked, and Poe smartly gives us a slice-of-life taking place over the course of a single day – ostensibly the best in Celestina’s (Kiersey Clemons) life, but also the most stressful, because it’s her wedding day. Family and friends and old co-workers, a lot of whom she has not seen in quite a while, have arrived at the soaking wet country retreat belonging to her humorless stalwart of a mother (the great Sheryl Lee Ralph). All of them are awaiting her union with River (Leon Bridges), whose calming presence lowers the temperature and slows the film’s heartbeat until the movie’s effect is utterly blissful. Her guests are played by the likes of Kelly Marie Tran, Aya Cash, Brandon Micheal Hall, Sandy Honig and Connor Paolo – a who’s who of indelible screen talent who have all added immeasurably to films in the past and will undoubtedly continue to do so.
They are here to add character and personality to a movie brimming with atmosphere in the creative department, from Jomo Fray’s lush cinematography of the surrounding bayou and the claustrophobic interiors, to art direction that breathes life into the film’s off-kilter period setting (the year 2033, to be exact), to visual concepts that are both odd and delightful (a favorite being the utterly excessive television program, featuring Lovie Simone’s hostess and maybe self-help guru), to film editing (by Kate Abernathy) that creates its own quixotic rhythm. The film is idiosyncratic without falling too deeply into quirk, always playing the line that separates those two states and then pulling back in an act of disarming affection.
The most important characters outside of Celestina’s own tiny orbit are, obviously, her husband, her mother and her beloved grandmother on the other side, Cookie (the inimitable Judith Light), whose stoned words of wisdom are at a crossroads with a generalized sort of exhaustion at having dreams or worries or, well, words of wisdom. Light is deeply moving in this role, which suggests so much about the character, while never once letting go of our vision of her as a Real Character, if you get the gist.
Poe is developing into a clear-eyed storyteller, whose films are about something real and tangible and unafraid of mess. She isn’t entirely concerned with writing characters who have everything figured out, and although it isn’t really fair to ascribe biographical or personal details upon a fictional story, here especially there seem a few things the filmmaker is pulling out of her own life and/or experiences to tell a story that means something to her. Sometimes, personal though a film’s story or the writing of it might be, the effect disappears into a lot of pretense and spectacle. The Young Wife, through the sheer nerve of its director, tackles a lot in a short amount of time, without any expectations of fitting within the dictates of a commercial lens. It’s exciting and original, and it announces a true filmmaker as loudly as her debut effort did.
Photo courtesy of Republic Pictures
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