Pariah
DIRECTED BY DEE REES
Writer-director Dee Rees drew heavily on her own experiences in crafting Pariah, about Alike (“Lee”), a 17-year-old African-American lesbian, struggling to reconcile her emerging sexual orientation with her Christian mother’s stridently pro-hetero harangues. Rees’ personal insights lend the film a heartfelt candor—amplified by a hugely credible lead turn from Adepero Oduye—as well as rare insider’s perspective on the intriguing idiosyncrasies of New York’s AG (read: thug lesbian) subculture. But the similarities between Rees and her protagonist aren’t all to Pariah’s credit. Specifically, Lee’s endeavors to forge a settled sense of self are mirrored by her efforts to explore her burgeoning poetic talents, and it’s evident that while both character and filmmaker show promise, each has yet to firmly find her voice. (Indeed, the very fact of the character’s poetic inclinations gives the impression of Rees hewing to indie formula.)
While Lee’s friendship with the (thugged-)out-and-proud Laura (an excellent Pernell Walker) is sensitively drawn, the striking authenticity of that dynamic isn’t shared in Pariah’s depiction of Lee’s overbearing, obstinately homophobic mother, Audrey (Kim Wayans). Here, both Rees and Wayans work with slightly too heavy a hand, rendering Audrey a shrill, flatly unsympathetic antagonist, seemingly bent on shrieking her daughter straight. For good measure, Audrey is determined to counteract the influence of Lee’s butch best friend, and introduces Lee to Bina (Aasha Davis), the apparently wholesome daughter of a fellow parishioner and colleague, and the character saddled with the film’s most abrupt, least convincing arc. Actually a fickle-hearted free spirit, Bina instead serves to provide Lee with a hasty lesson in heartbreak. Her capricious, bi-curious vacillations are a clumsy contrivance.
Rees fares better in establishing Lee’s relationship with her father, Arthur (Charles Parnell), even if his willful ignorance toward his daughter’s homosexuality is also communicated rather too ham-handedly at times. Generally, though, Parnell’s secretive Arthur is portrayed more sensitively than Wayans’ Audrey, and his conflicted attitudes more closely resemble the abundant humanity Rees so shrewdly captures in Laura and Lee. Happily, in Walker and Oduye, in particular, she finds collaborators capable of investing the roles with the truth and vitality they deserve.