Pariah
With afrocentric, LGBT, and coming-of-age issues, Dee Rees' debut is a bit too precious, if you follow the pun.
SCREENINGS:
Monday, September 12, 7:30 p.m.
TIFF Bell Lightbox 1 (350 King Street West)
Wednesday, September 14, 5:45 p.m.
AMC 3 (10 Dundas Street East)
Expanded from her award-winning short of the same name, Rees’ films grapples with Afrocentric queer issues nestled inside a coming-of-age family drama. Alike (Adepero Oduye) is a 17-year-old lesbian who ditches her fitted cap and long tee before coming home and playing straight for her controlling mother, Audrey (Kim Wayans), and her aloof father (Charles Parnell), who pulls extra shifts to keep his family comfortably middle-class.
Worried about the corrupting influence of Alike’s friend Laura (Pernell Walker), the Bible-thumped Audrey sets her up with a church friend’s daughter (Aasha Davis), whose own heterosexuality (like that of anyone under 30 in Pariah) seems a bit flexible. If this film succeeds at anything, it’s the characterization of Alike as a self-acknowledged lesbian who’s worried about acting on her impulses, stalking around gay clubs with her hands in her pockets. The anxiety of actively becoming something you know you are is very real, and Oduye makes this crisis seem deeply legit. Elsewhere, though, Pariah lapses into calculated tearfulness that makes it seems a little too precious (pun intended). The film presents a world where families are built of useful character types (the demanding mother, the deluded-but-compassion father, the ever-loving sister) who rarely spin out of Alike’s orbit. There are some fine performances and great cinematography, but Pariah‘s “serious movie” sense of itself is hard to swallow