I was immediately drawn to this film's ability to capture a Sunday in early 2000's San Francisco. Then, about ten minutes in, I started to like the two main characters, a woman guilty about cheating on her boyfriend but attracted to the guy with whom she cheated, and a guy embittered by being black in what I have always regarded as America's least black city, although Seattle denizens may disagree. About twenty minutes in I went from liking to caring about Micah and Jo and hoping that their fragile, nervous relationship would broaden and deepen. Which took me through the film to its very moving denouement. Quite a debut for director Barry Jenkins (who also wrote it) and maybe it's because I value heavy themes treated with some degree of humor and whimsicality, as evidenced here, but I actually liked it better than "Moonlight".
Couple reasons I give it a 9 rather than a 10. I thought the whole muted color thing to be a Film School Idea run amok and that scene of the anti gentrification meeting/ discussion, plunked down in the middle of this very poignant, airy film, was most discordant, kind of like Socialist Realism in a Von Sternberg flic.
Bottom Line: Micah and Jo shoulda met in Los Angeles. Give it an A minus.
Couple reasons I give it a 9 rather than a 10. I thought the whole muted color thing to be a Film School Idea run amok and that scene of the anti gentrification meeting/ discussion, plunked down in the middle of this very poignant, airy film, was most discordant, kind of like Socialist Realism in a Von Sternberg flic.
Bottom Line: Micah and Jo shoulda met in Los Angeles. Give it an A minus.