Dynamic duo shine in Queen
Review Queen and Slim (R13, 132 mins) Directed by Melina Matsoukas Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett ★★★1⁄2
Acouple of years ago, mooching around New York on a bitterly cold winter’s night, I saw a poster for a movie called Southside With You.
Intrigued and more than eager to get into a warm room, I bought a ticket and watched – very happily – alone in the cinema, as an absolute peach of a film unfurled on the screen.
Southside With You is an imagining of what must count as one of the most sensational first dates in history; the night, in 1989, when a young community organiser named Barack Obama asked Michelle Robinson to accompany him to a public meeting and then a movie theatre to watch Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing. The Obamas were married three years later.
I thought about Southside a couple of times during Queen and Slim. Like Southside, acclaimed music video director Melina Matsoukas’ (she directed Beyonce’s Formation clip, among many, many others) debut feature is a date movie, set on that porous but ineluctable border at which the realities of life in Black America and White America meet and test each other.
Queen and Slim are out for a first drink together – and no more than that – when a random encounter with a racist cop turns to tragedy.
Suddenly on the run, the unlikely duo head across state lines, looking for safe harbour with a selection of friends and family they hope they can trust to keep their presence quiet. Not everything goes to plan – as you might have guessed.
In the leads, Daniel Kaluuya (Get Out) just cements the impression that he is a hugely talented and adaptable performer, with an armoury of responses at his command many more famous performers would kill to have.
Next to Kaluuya, Jodie TurnerSmith brings physicality and wit to a role that is sometimes burdened by having too much to say and not quite enough to do.
Queen and Slim plays out as a dark, disturbing and often engrossing road-trip into an America that very seldom makes it authentically to the screen.
A leaner, tighter and terser draft of the script would have been appreciated – and would have led to an even better film.
But Queen and Slim is still an accomplished debut, with two excellent performances at its heart, and well worth finding on a big screen.