Miss Juneteenth is an evocative portrait of Black life in Forth Worth, Texas, seen through the lens of Turquoise Jones (Nicole Beharie), a single mother trying desperately to make ends meet as she encourages her teenage daughter to participate in a pageant that she won herself in her youth. In her feature debut, writer-director Channing Godfrey Peoples deftly charts the emotional bramble and inner yearnings of not just Turquoise and her daughter, but the family and loved ones that surround them in a way that makes no grand proclamations about Black identity, instead choosing to revel in the tender considerations of this minor-key film. Issues of class, alcoholism, personal failure, and secret wishes run through the film. With gentle cinematography shot through with amber light and an intelligently wrought script, Miss Juneteenth has many pleasures. But its crowning jewel is the performance by Beharie. She’s simply magnificent, burnishing the quietest moments with a striking complexity and empathy that has stayed with me in the weeks after seeing the film originally.
No comments:
Post a Comment