Black and White

 

THE FORTY-YEAR-OLD VERSION (A-minus) - Radha Blank explodes on the cinematic scene with this life-affirming autobiographical diatribe about art and race, as well as a valentine to New York City. Blank plays a version of herself, on the brink of 40 and having nothing to show for the past decade trying to live up to her 30 Under 30 acclaim.

Blank, a struggling playwright, finds an affinity for rapping but doesn't trust herself to dive into that competitive young person's world. A local proprietor of beats, named D (Oswin Benjamin), does believe in her, but her instinct is to fall back into her familiar world of the stage, where she alternates between getting her baby, "Harlem Ave.," staged and mentoring high school students in acting.

This tension is further frazzled by Blank having to capitulate to a white producer and white director in order to get even a watered-down version of her vision to Broadway. Blank uses a rather broad brush to portray the white characters as villains, but the actors, including Reed Birney as the bullying producer J. Whitman, overcome that handicap with a solid dose of energy.

In fact, Blank's forte here is her casting (shout-out to casting director Jessica Daniels), from Benjamin's sullen but big-hearted mix-master to the spirited high school kids (especially Haskiri Velazquez as Rosa); Peter Kim as Blank's childhood pal and flummoxed manager Archie; the character actors who play a Greek chorus of street people (a nod to Spike Lee); and Blank's own brother as her brother. Blank and Kim have such a natural connection, it would not be surprising if she really was his beard for the prom back in the '90s. This is a powerful collection of performers who sink their teeth into Blank's earthy script, and they orbit the appealing author who presents herself with an attractive mix of self-deprecation and fuck-you gumption.

The main distraction here is the black-and-white palette Blank chooses, a conceit that seemed tired when Lee and Woody Allen served it up in decades past. Blank and cinematographer Eric Branco have a deep appreciation for New York, both the street life and the enclosed spaces (they shot in Blank's own cramped apartment). But the colorless visuals both drain the life out of a colorful story and create a distracting artifice that feels as artificial as the play-within-the-film that Blank so decries as a compromise. Still, this is a thoroughly entertaining slice of life from a fresh, confident voice.

BONUS TRACK

There are a lot of fine beats and some nods to old-school rappers, but this Quincy Jones track, "Love and Peace," offers a dose of calm inside the storm: