Fonny’s childhood friend Daniel ( Brian Tyree Henry), bathed in golden light, is devastated by the unspeakable things that happened to him in jail. What does oppression caused by a white supremacist society do to your capacity to look after loving bonds? Fonny’s holier-than-thou mother ( Aunjanue Ellis), with two daughters in her image, clings to God because the life on earth is crushing. “She has a weak head!” snaps back another), the scene is anchored by an appreciable sense of foreboding over how life will pan out for this unborn baby. As satisfyingly catty as things get (“She has a weak heart!” warns one character.
A fragile peace between these factions shatters and insults fly with the zinging pace and verbal bite of a screwball, with Regina King and Teyonah Parris (Tish’s mother and sister) as MVPs. The sharpest lines take place when Tish’s family break the news to Fonny’s family that their children are having a baby. This is a reverent adaptation that clips lines of dialogue from the novel as carefully as if they were roses, replete with thorns. James Baldwin fans will be wondering how the source text is handled. Moonlight is tonally evoked as the same cinematographer, James Laxton, and same composer, Nicholas Britell, bring a gliding camera and a score of strings that groan with yearning. Jenkins’ use of colour has earned comparisons to Douglas Sirk, yet it is the shivery and elusive romanticism of Wong Kar-wai that these young lovers call to mind.
In the opening scene they are both in yellow and blue as they kiss for the first time, aged 19 and 22, in a sudden sexual awakening between childhood friends. Although the story is one of injustice, beautifully composed aesthetics infuse the picture with harmony.
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