Micah and Jo meet at a party, get drunk, have sex and wake up the following morning with hangovers. She is more than willing to let it end there, to the point of lying about her real name and running away, but Micah has other ideas. After discovering her name and address he tracks her down to the apartment she shares with her white curator boyfriend who is away working in London. Jo reluctantly lets him in and he proceeds to question her about who pays her rent, whether her boyfriend is white, why there are no pictures on the wall as well as questioning her blackness. Although he comes across as somewhat annoying, for the purposes of the plot we are led to believe that Jo is so charmed by his behaviour that she agrees to spend the day with him. Micah spends the time continuing to criticise Jo's awareness of black culture, complaining about the gentrification of the city which parallels the gentrification of black people, questioning Jo's lack of employment and finally berating her for not being involved with a person of colour.
For all his blackness Micah is ignorant about why Black History Month is in February. For all his complaints about gentrification he is not part of the campaign to halt it. He complains about Jo's boyfriend being white but it is clear from his MySpace page that his former girlfriend was white. Micah is not impressed with Jo spending her time printing teeshirts to sell but his job cleaning out fish tanks is hardly anything to brag about and his final rant that she should be going out black or Latino men doesn't carry much weight as he doesn't appear to have any black or Latino friends. Heck the party where they meet is thrown by a wealthy white guy who he is clearly friends with.
Although Jo seems to be relatively intelligent and confident, she fails to stand up to many of the criticisms levelled at her, or call Micah out on his obvious hypocrisy. So we are left wondering why it is Jo gives Micah such an easy ride. Is it because she shares Micah's rather narrow view of the world? Or that she simply sees no point in making unnecessary waves when their association is just a one day distraction from her real life. How much more satisfying would it have been for her to turn the tables on Micah and get him to open up about his real reason for pursuing her so hard and why he had such a problem with her boyfriend being white. Was it that he'd had his heart broken by a white woman and felt things would be easier with a black partner? Or was he looking to exact some kind of revenge?
I stumbled across this film pretty recently. It was categorised as part of the mumblecore genre presumably because it had an obviously small budget and featured then unknown actors and playing characters of a certain age who spend most of the film simply talking to one another. Where it differs from the usual mumblecore offering is that the characters are black and that race along with gentrification are big themes. It's interesting to read the glowing reviews about this film and while part of me agrees with the poster who suggested they were written by people involved in the production, I think it's more likely to be dow to a willingness to overlook the film's obvious flaws because there are sadly so few films featuring hipster black people happily listening to indie music and part of the indie scene.
For all his blackness Micah is ignorant about why Black History Month is in February. For all his complaints about gentrification he is not part of the campaign to halt it. He complains about Jo's boyfriend being white but it is clear from his MySpace page that his former girlfriend was white. Micah is not impressed with Jo spending her time printing teeshirts to sell but his job cleaning out fish tanks is hardly anything to brag about and his final rant that she should be going out black or Latino men doesn't carry much weight as he doesn't appear to have any black or Latino friends. Heck the party where they meet is thrown by a wealthy white guy who he is clearly friends with.
Although Jo seems to be relatively intelligent and confident, she fails to stand up to many of the criticisms levelled at her, or call Micah out on his obvious hypocrisy. So we are left wondering why it is Jo gives Micah such an easy ride. Is it because she shares Micah's rather narrow view of the world? Or that she simply sees no point in making unnecessary waves when their association is just a one day distraction from her real life. How much more satisfying would it have been for her to turn the tables on Micah and get him to open up about his real reason for pursuing her so hard and why he had such a problem with her boyfriend being white. Was it that he'd had his heart broken by a white woman and felt things would be easier with a black partner? Or was he looking to exact some kind of revenge?
I stumbled across this film pretty recently. It was categorised as part of the mumblecore genre presumably because it had an obviously small budget and featured then unknown actors and playing characters of a certain age who spend most of the film simply talking to one another. Where it differs from the usual mumblecore offering is that the characters are black and that race along with gentrification are big themes. It's interesting to read the glowing reviews about this film and while part of me agrees with the poster who suggested they were written by people involved in the production, I think it's more likely to be dow to a willingness to overlook the film's obvious flaws because there are sadly so few films featuring hipster black people happily listening to indie music and part of the indie scene.