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If Beale Street Could Talk

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If Beale Street Could Talk

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Summary

Romantic drama starring KiKi Layne and Stephan James. In early 1970s New York, "Tish" Rivers visits her boyfriend "Fonny" Hunt, who is in prison for a crime he didn't commit. Flashbacks show us their lives and relationship up to this point, as well as the true reason for Fonny's wrongful arrest. Meanwhile, in the present day, Tish and her mother Sharon work to find the real criminal responsible.

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IMDB

Review

A star rating of 5 out of 5.

Andrew Collins

The Harlem-set love story based on the novel by the great American observer James Baldwin is a good fit for Barry Jenkins after his Oscar-winning breakthrough Moonlight (2016). Arguably a variation on a Romeo and Juliet romance, staged in the early 1970s, only here central couple 19-year-old Tish (KiKi Layne) and 22-year-old Fonny (Stephan James) are kept apart not by warring families, but the institutional racism of everyday life, which is especially acute for young Black men. In voiceover prudently lifted from the text, Tish proclaims: "I hope that nobody has ever had to look at anybody they love through glass" - a reference to the partition that separates visitor from inmate in prison, where Fonny winds up. Their love blossoms in flashback, with a visual poetry that confirms the film as a thematic, artistic and political cousin to Moonlight, though the narrative is much more deliberate and sincere. Like Moonlight, it's beautifully shot by cinematographer James Laxton and resonates emotionally in parallel to Nicholas Britell's languid score. An unashamedly idealised depiction of love and hate (the latter grimacingly embodied by Ed Skrein's racist cop), it succeeds in making the heartache of this couple's separation after a swooningly decorous courtship even more painful and cruelly truncated. It's fabulously acted, too, with rich, nuanced performances from the whole cast, though Oscar and Golden Globe winner Regina King stands out as Tish's righteous mother. You sense Jenkins is already forging an important body of work.

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7.1/10

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Credits

Cast

rolenameClementine "Tish" RiversKiki LayneAlonzo "Fonny" HuntStephan JamesSharon RiversRegina KingJoseph RiversColman DomingoFrank HuntMichael BeachErnestine RiversTeyonah ParrisMrs HuntAunjanue EllisOfficer BellEd SkreinLevyDave FrancoPietro AlvarezPedro PascalPedrocitoDiego LunaDaniel CartyBrian Tyree HenryHaywardFinn WittrockVictoria RogersEmily Rios

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Crew

rolenameDirectorBarry Jenkins (2)

Details

Theatrical distributor

Entertainment One

Released on

2019-02-08

Languages

English | Spanish

Guidance

Violence, swearing, sex scenes, nudity

Available on

DVD and Blu-ray

Formats

Colour

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