Hello strangers! It’s been a while. A long long while. I’ve barely recovered from two festivals (London Film Festival and Film Africa) while working my now full-time job. But I won’t lament the self-caused exhaustion I caused myself because I have too much film goodness to talk about. I feel like I’ve hit the jackpot this year with the sheer number of great films I’ve seen over the past few months. I’ve seen about 30 films in that time and can safely say about 80% I liked or loved! The odds are in favour of film this year, especially from Africa. But before I warble in wonder at the artistic output of the motherland,  I will kick off first with LFF as that is the order in which the festivals happened.

Dear White People

One of the most anticipated films of the year amongst film buffs and the just very intrigued, Dear White People attempts to do the thing that no film has properly done before – provide an in-your-face platform for discussion of race relations in an apparently post-racial America. Although intrinsic to American history and the American identity, race relations is still a hot button issue that is rarely honestly explored. Dear White People, a provocative debut from Justin Simien is that expose. A sly satire set in a fictional Ivy League college, Dear White People follows the culture clash that ensues between black and white students.

We meet Sam White (a very good Tessa Thompson), a politically veracious mixed race Film student, who through her college radio programme expunges the racial prejudices that still permeate American culture. Her provocative words cause a stir on campus, in particular with resident ‘rich boy with powerful daddy’ Kurt (Kyle Gallner) who decides to bring Sam downa a peg or two with an “African American” themed party with his white friends. Amongst the mix of swords and words is outsider Lionel Higgins (astonishingly portrayed by Everybody Hates Chris‘ Tyler James Williams), aspiring writer and shy young gay man, he neither fits in with the black or white crowd so he is forced to observe from the sidelines.

It is his storyline that provides the most truth and subtlety in a brave and often very funny film, and while his moments on screen are often engaging, outside of this, Dear White People is a flawed movie. While certainly ambitious with some one-liners that will never lose their potency in the quotability stakes:

My hair is a black hole for white hands.

– Lionel on white people’s obsession with his afro.

However, overall the film is not as hard-hitting or unique as it thinks it is. While there are many moments as described above in the film that serve as a eureka moment for black audiences (and aware white people alike) giving the film a cathartic quality knowing that some experiences of being black has been universally experienced. And with plenty of laugh out load moments to be had, the film is quite a rollicking experience. However, the film exists in a world that is strictly black and white (pun intended) with little manoeuvre for a more in-depth discussion. There are moments where the story feels so so superficial that its message becomes reductive.

With the exception of a throwaway gag about a Chinese-American group, Dear White People exists purely in a world where there are only black and white Americans. Nearly all the characters fit these narrow and very simplistic categories (bar Lionel) and as a consequence, many of the characters tread the dangerous line of becoming stereotypes, the very thing the film’s premise is arguing against. The suggestion that the world is not so black and white, i.e. in Lionel’s case implies no membership in neither camp, so surefire exclusion. While Lionel’s storyline ends on an uplifting note, where he is embraced by his fellow black students, one can’t help but wonder if it’s more because he succumbed to peer pressure at the expense of his own identity in order to accepted. Forced to pick a side after realising he was being used to by those he perceived to also be outsiders (and who were coincidentally white), he naturally turned to those who were minutes before were equally as dismissive towards him as the rest.

Also the film is very insular, very American. Starting from the setting in a very American institution (which made me wonder why there is such a fascination with American universities a settings for young people stories. Not every young person goes to college, let alone an ivy league school, where are their stories?), many of the pop-culture references are also specifically very American, which meant many of the jokes were lost on wider audiences.

Again, however, I turn back to the character of Lionel because I do see him as the film’s saving grace. He is not just black, he is also gay, his character is given a dimension that is sorely lacking in some of the other characters he shares the screen with. His storyline is the most sensitively written, exploring the oft ignored horrific homophobic attitudes to homosexuality in black culture. With an equally sensitive performance from Williams, Lionel has a layer of complexity and nuance and humanity to the character thus making him the most relatable person on screen. His moments on screen were so wonderful, I was left me wondering how much more revelatory the film could have been if the other characters, while well acted by the young cast, could have been as fleshed out as this one.

It has to be said that while the film was enjoyable and one I would definitely watch again, if not just for some of the clever dialogue and jokes missed as such as the frantic pace of the dialogue, the film was a tad disappointing. Simien certainly has talent and it’s fantastic that he was brave enough to make a film that asked important questions and I believe it’s a benefit for all that he also touches upon the taboo subject in black culture of it’s virulent homophobia. While I never expected him to provide any answers (who can?), Simien still befalls the pitfalls of debut filmmaking. Some of the writing could not keep up with the pace of directing and cutting and overall the narrative meanders by the latter second act, settling into a disappointing and lacklustre third that sends out the message that after all the furore and shouting for attention, the film just couldn’t find the words for what it really wanted to say, instead becoming a conventional college comedy with a slightly ambivalent ending.

I see Dear White People, not as a great film in the sense of its filmmaking achievement but as a good and important film like 12 Years A Slave that is sorely needed in order to ask these questions about life in a supposedly post-racial world.