"If Beale Street could speak" – Variety

"I hope nobody has ever had to look at anyone they like through the glass," says Tish, 19, in the opening scene of "Si Beale Street Could Talk "by James Baldwin. Fonny, imprisoned for an unforgivable crime. A work of social realism raised to the height of poetry by the beauty of his voice and the humanism of his mind – a feat that the director Barry Jenkins also managed to achieve with his previous film "Moonlight" – the novel from Baldwin in 1974 two separate trips, depending largely on their racial origin.

Whites will see a black man behind bars and draw their own conclusions, quickly assuming that Baldwin uses the rest of the book to challenge and unravel: How can Tish hope to raise this child if she is poor and her baby dad in jail? On the other hand, black people know that the mere fact that Fonny was arrested does not make him a criminal. On the contrary, he is the victim of an unfair system, which raises another question: what are the chances of justice being done and that he is allowed to return to his family?

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As an African-American filmmaker fresh out of his great Oscar win, Jenkins does not seem particularly worried about "what white people think" of this equation (and why would it be, when the story belongs to him? ). Instead, he adapts Baldwin's novel for more or less the same personal reasons he wrote "Moonlight" – to explore the black experience in America – and in both films, prison is what could have been to be a beautiful life. In "Beale Street", which is even more playful with the traditional timeline than "Moonlight", the belief in love never fades, which accounts for the way African-Americans have to deal with a broken system . – that enhanced by the use of black and white vintage clichés of black life.

Jenkins, who extracts much of Tish's narrative and much of the dialogue directly from the novel, uses this heartbreaking line "through the glass," but not before introducing an idyllic scene between Tish (Kiki Layne) and Fonny (Stephan James). ) who could have come out of "La La Land": under a canopy of yellow leaves, they skirt the Hudson River, he dresses with a bright yellow button-down and an undressed blue denim jacket, she wears a blue dress under a canary yellow coat.

The reality dissipates as the camera cranes follow these two lovebirds, setting a tone more "Little Miss Sunshine" than "Moonlight" for much of Jenkins' third (and third best) feature film, up to the costumes. too cute and choice of distracting wallpaper. The film quotes Baldwin as saying: "Every black person born in America was born on Beale Street," but it could also be in a snow globe. Deciding how to translate Baldwin's prose on screen, Jenkins could also have made Henry Ginsberg's Howl movie a Douglas Sirk movie (or put Alice Waters' "The Color Purple" through Steven Spielberg's filter) .

This may not be the right approach for everyone, but it will work for some, especially for those for whom Jenkins' "Beale Street" is another important step in the crusade for the African-American representation on the screen . If the director's vision on Tish and Fonny's romance seems a little too idealistic, it's simply his way of reinforcing the tragic situation created by Fonny's unjustified arrest for the rape of a Puerto Rican , who chose him at the suggestion of a racist cop. No one who knows Fonny could ever believe that he could do such a thing, and Jenkins does not let the shadow of doubt enter the public mind.

In launching James as Fonny, he disputes the notion that only Tish could appreciate his strange appearances (in his book, his best friend describes "how ugly, with skin like crusts of raw and wet potatoes, as a Chinese and all that). thick hair and thick lips "), inviting the audience to crash too. In the same way, he softens Tish's character, substituting his painfully clumsy naivety for a kind of shyness with a soft voice. When the two men have made love for the first time, it's not a passionate awakening, but the sweetest that a young woman can hope for – all this is valid, but not quite what Baldwin had in mind. As an author, he actively resisted the relatively superficial aesthetics of Black-Barbie and Ken Jenkins. Instead, he painted his characters as imperfect, funny and often contradictory human beings.

What is most surprising about Jenkins' approach is how he deviates from his previous two features. During her debut in 2008, "Before Sunrise", a "medicine for melancholy" in black and white, two hyper-articulate singles from San Francisco spend all night sharing their ideas. They are never short of things to say, while Tish and Fonny have a more tacit connection, practically speaking idle when they choose to share their feelings. In "Moonlight", the black boys look blue (or the title of Tarell's play Alvin McCraney), while the director of photography James Laxton gives each a golden and warm glow, which makes their personality very different. far less melancholy in the face of similar legal challenges.

Of course, there is nothing that indicates that Jenkins can not go completely differently than Baldwin or his own previous style. If "Moonlight" was specific to his education and that of McCraney in Florida, then "Beale Street" is supposed to be something more universal, related to African Americans around the world. Rather than getting caught up in the costume and design of the production, we are supposed to go beyond these superficial details, be it the way Tish and his family, his sister Ernestine (Teyonah Parris) and his unwavering support. mother Sharon (Regina King) – defend her pregnancy in front of her mother-in-law (Aunjanue Ellis) who is being judged or in a tense confrontation with a fanatical policeman (Ed Skrein) after Fonny fought at the neighborhood bodega. But that can be difficult when, in a scene where a Jewish owner (Dave Franco) is the first person to seriously consider renting them, his flashy vintage sweater diverts the attention from the stage: the world does not give two Tish and Fonny shake hands.

However, in other aspects, the style of the film serves to reinforce the experience, particularly in the nonlinear way of narrative, between the current struggle – including a fantastic sequence when King, except by channeling " Foxy Brown, "flies to Puerto Rico to confront Fonny's accuser – and set moments before his arrest. Jenkins does not have the budget to recreate Harlem as it was around 1974 (see James Earl Jones-Diahann Carroll's novel "Claudine" for a glimpse of the neighborhood at the time), but that does not seem to be its objective in any case. Instead, if "Beale Street" is to be a universal expression of Afro-American heritage, as Baldwin intended, then Jenkins wants to show that love and family are the key to the survival of his community. .