Friday, February 28, 2020

Romancefest 2020: She's Gotta Have It


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Written and Directed by Spike Lee. Starring Tracy Cmilla Jones, Redmond Hicks, John Canada Terrell, Spike Lee and Raye Dowell. USA, 1986.

A young artist in Brooklyn juggles her three boyfriends – an unemployed, hyperactive slacker, a buffed up male model and a serious romantic – while also dealing with society’s attitudes towards a sexually liberated young woman who doesn’t want to settle down.

I might as well turn in my film buff card right now when I admit that, although I’m familiar with this movie and have read about it and scene clips of it as long as I can remember, I’d never actually watched Spike Lee’s first joint from beginning to end until today. And I have to say, aside from some clunky acting you might expect from a super indie flick like this, this movie’s pretty great. Most of Lee’s trademarks are surprisingly solid from the beginning and the story he chooses to tell is also surprisingly progressive for the time. The movie was made in 1986, and approaches female sexuality in a way that might even seem liberated today. Of course, it is a product of its time, so there are some less-than-woke moments, but taking context into account it’s a fascinatingly sex-positive look at a complex female character.

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