LUCE
KELVIN HARRISON JR has his own experience of black history
DRAMA Sunday, Sky Premiere HD, 11.45am & 8pm
THE BLACK ADOPTED son of liberal white parents stirs up trouble with deft alacrity in this absorbing film, which shares with its enigmatic protagonist the desire and dexterity to push people’s buttons.
Played with cryptic charisma by Kelvin Harrison Jr, the eponymous Luce is a former child soldier who was plucked from a war zone in Eritrea at the age of seven to be raised in comfort in the US by a well-meaning, well-heeled couple (Naomi Watts and Tim Roth).
Ten years later, he is his high school’s star pupil, a skilled debater and a talented athlete. ‘I’m a poster boy,’ he says, mockingly. ‘A black kid who overcame his tragic past.’
He does, however, have a prickly relationship with his exacting history teacher, played by Octavia Spencer. And when she asks her class to write an essay in the voice of a historical figure, he picks Frantz Fanon, the 20th-century political philosopher of decolonisation from Martinique and notoriously an advocate of revolutionary violence. Is he simply fulfilling the teacher’s brief or expressing his own beliefs?
Like Luce himself, director Julius Onah’s film keeps us guessing, throwing in white privilege and guilt, black identity and code-switching – and a bag of illegal fireworks – into the story’s combustible mix.
This is very much a drama of ideas. It is based on the play by JC Lee, and a whiff of the stage still clings to the characters’ intellectual tussling. But it is very well acted, always stimulating and, at this present juncture, extremely timely. 2019, 15, 110MIN