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Queen & Slim Is Important but Uneven
6-7 minutes
Melina Matsoukas’ debut feature opens wide today
Nov 27, 2019 12 PM
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What makes a legend? Just as in real life, it’s anyone’s guess what fictional characters will be lionized in popular culture. The times we live in feel urgent, but symbols often take time to become fixtures in the public consciousness. Occasionally, heroes are born in an instant, and that’s the case in director Melina Matsoukas’
Queen & Slim, which opens wide today.
It starts with an unpromising Tinder date in Cleveland. Queen (Jodie Turner-Smith) and Slim (Daniel Kaluuya, best known for his Oscar-nominated turn in
Get Out) sit in the booth of a brightly lit diner, and she’s all-around unimpressed. “It’s black owned,” he says in defense of the setting. Slim says a silent prayer before diving into his eggs, and Queen lets loose that she’s an atheist. It seems she’s his foil in every way. Where Slim is warm and self-effacing, Queen is cold and confident. Where he’s mild-mannered, she’s headstrong and outspoken. She’s a defense attorney — a realist. He’s a family man and an idealist. His license plate says “TRUSTGOD.”
As he drives her home, he’s pulled over. Like Sandra Bland, he failed to signal while switching lanes. The cop (locally beloved breakout country star Sturgill Simpson in his
second film cameo of the year) is every bit the racist monster we imagine. Slim is obedient, careful; Queen loudly expresses her objections from the passenger seat. The two are caught in the place of tension that black Americans experience on a daily basis — how can you defend your rights while staying safe? How can you simply assert your humanity to someone who does not see you as human? They’re trapped. The cop shoots Queen, grazing her leg, and Slim gets the gun and kills him. They hit the road.
“Well if it isn’t the black Bonnie and Clyde,” says Queen’s Uncle Earl (a magnificent Bokeem Woodbine) when she arrives at his New Orleans home with Slim in tow. If you haven’t already guessed how the story will go, Earl makes it clear. Queen and Slim are on the run from the law, and their chances of making it out alive are, well, slim.
Turner-Smith is great as Queen, and her transformation is believable. She slowly lets go of her cynicism and opens up to the possibility of love. While not fully adopting Slim’s pacifism, she softens. Kaluuya gives a strong performance as a man who wears his heart on his sleeve. After playing the bad guy in
Widows and a self-assured leader in
Black Panther, Kaluuya shows a new, tender side, and it works.
It’s Matsoukas’ debut feature, but she isn’t a newbie by any means. As a veteran director of music videos, she’s worked with Beyoncé, Rihanna and Snoop Dogg, to name a few, and she’s directed several episodes of Issa Rae’s HBO hit
Insecure and two episodes of Aziz Ansari’s Netflix series
Master of None. As Queen and Slim drive south to Florida — where they hope to board a plane or boat to Cuba — Matsoukas and art directors Spencer Davison and Jeremy Woolsey create vibrant settings.
The film has a dreamlike quality, and the phases of the duo's trip feel like vignettes that culminate in highly stylized moments. Individually, these sequences are gorgeously shot and reveal the characters growing and changing — Queen and Slim oscillate between fear and exhilaration. But because the same formula repeats itself, these scenes feel loosely strung together, and the slow pacing deflates the momentum. I wouldn’t call the film tedious — Matsoukas’ aesthetic choices are too sharp for that — but on the whole, Queen & Slim has more style than substance. At one point in the film, Matsoukas cuts between a sex scene and a minor character’s experience at a demonstration against police that has horrible consequences. There's clearly an intended meaning behind the choice, but I’m not sure what it is.
This is partly the fault of the script by Lena Waithe, who worked with James Frey on the story. Waithe made her name in
Master of None, which she co-starred in and wrote for. (She was the first black woman to win an Emmy for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series for her work on an episode of
Master.) Some of the dialogue in
Queen & Slim feels true to life, and the journey is peppered with moments of connection. The couple argues about whether fat Luther Vandross was better than skinny Luther Vandross; Uncle Earl banters with his women (especially Naomi, who is played by a vivacious Melanie Halfkenny). But other moments feel forced.
The couple repeats hackneyed lines to each other as they fall in love. (Queen says something to the effect of wanting a lover who will hold her hand while she licks her wounds. Eesh.)
The strongest moments in the film occur when Queen and Slim meet black Americans who support them. As they drive across the South, the dashboard-camera video of their encounter with the cop plays all over the news, and other black folks recognize them. Sometimes it’s with a knowing smile or a good deed. Other times, the couple are treated like celebrities. Once, they find surprising allies in a white couple (portrayed by Flea and Chloë Sevigny). These interactions feel fresh and powerful, and they articulate a sense of unity — a collective desire for justice that’s desperately needed and long overdue.
America needs a black Bonnie and Clyde, both in the world of the film and in real life, and in ways,
Queen & Slim fits the bill.
But Matsoukas and Waithe have better films ahead of them.
Queen & Slim
R, 132 minutes
Opens wide Wednesday, Nov. 27