'If Beale Street Could Talk' A Review

If Beale Street Could Talk is a period drama adapted from the book of the same name by James Baldwin. The film unfolds in a non-linear structure and opens on Tish(KiKi Layne) telling her family that she's pregnant with her childhood friend and lover Fonny's(Stephan James) baby. The news is complicated by the fact he's wrongfully incarcerated. The film then cuts back and forth in time showing the main couples love affair as well as the family's attempts at Fonny's exoneration.

The supporting cast are all incredible Regina King and Colman Domingo as Tish's parents are particularly mesmerizing. Giving nuanced, grounded, emotive performance in the brief flashes we get of them. Brian Tyree Henry also, in virtually only one scene, manages to make a significant impact on the film. The opening scene with both Tish's and Fonny's family is totally electric and raises the bar high for the film which is never able to get back to the level of engagement. Unfortunately both Layne and James either don't achieve or aren't given much in the way of character development. They are mostly blank ciphers for the protracted close ups and the long, wistful, overly scored scenes in which they inhabit. The are more a romantic idea of a fated couple in love rather than actual characters, there performances are more lyrical than emotional and as such they don't necessarily evoke the required empathy that the story needs to sustain itself. The most engaging scenes are almost all ones they are not in.

The non-linear structure is a good device but at this point, since it's arguable advent in 1994's Pulp Fiction, it is no longer new and doesn't have the automatic attraction it once did. Does it fail? No. But it doesn't really bring extra to the film. The voiceover, presumably a way to incorporate the source material, is dissonant as is the real-world stills that occasionally accompany it. They distract rather than enhance a story that doesn't need them. If Layne and Fonny were allowed to act, if we could see scenes of their families living their lives, the expositional and historical information provided in the VO would be inferred more authoritatively and with more elegance. The score, unquestionably gorgeous, is to ever-present. It pounds when it should creep, blasts when it should seethe. It also, at times, takes away from the job the performers are already expertly doing.

Writer/Director Barry Jenkins sophomore feature is unquestionably a competent and worthwhile film however it seems to have less confidence in itself and with its audience than did the totally assured and harmonious Moonlight. Perhaps some of the discord is a result of the adaptation process, attempting to adhere too close to or go too far from the source material. There are some amazingly composed shots and a handful of masterfully acted moving scenes but the sum doesn't quite add up to a coherent whole.

Flawed but ambitious, beautiful but somewhat underwhelming.

Rent It.