If Beale Street Could Talk

Cert: 15A; Now showing

Although largely positive this is another film that has seen some quite different views and takes. It is a measure of the film’s depth that there is room for so much different interpretation.

Moonlight was always going to be a hard act to follow, but Barry Jenkins has done it, delivering a warm, exquisite and heartbreaking movie. He adapted the James Baldwin novel —but from the beginning the film lays down a different aesthetic. Baldwin favoured flaws and the funny looking; this film and these people are studiously beautiful and gorgeously dressed.

Nineteen-year-old Tish (Kiki Layne) has to tell her imprisoned boyfriend Fonny (Stephan James) that she is pregnant. She promises he’ll be out before the baby comes because he is innocent.

The non-linear narrative has the events that took them to the opening scene told in pieces, beautiful pieces. To me that different aesthetic is about marking how, although the events are set 45 years ago, the essential reality has not changed that much. What could have happened then could still happen now. Tish’s mother (Regina Kin), father (Colman Domingo) and sister (Teyonah Parris) show unerring support for the young couple, although Fonny’s snobby mother (Aunjanue Ellis) does not — and the story’s heart of love and family allows the audience to feel a certain rage at injustice and powerlessness. It’s probably best to just go see for yourself.