![]() ![]() It is one of the film’s strongest scenes: a montage of interactions mediated by race and class.īarry Jenkins, If Beale Street Could Talk, 2019, film still. ![]() In another sequence, feeling the strain of her advanced pregnancy, Tish almost breaks the glass counter, the camera zooming in on her gritted teeth as she describes the exhaustion she feels at having to smile on demand for the white men who manipulate the retail experience into something sinister, as if they’re entitled to her perfumed flesh. Employed as a sales assistant, 19-year-old Tish, who is having to work through the final two trimesters of her pregnancy, narrates her experiences of interacting with a high-end clientele and reveals how her role also requires her to function as a kind of public attraction. In Barry Jenkins’s 2018 Oscar-nominated screen adaptation of James Baldwin’s 1974 novel, If Beale Street Could Talk, the protagonist and narrator, nicknamed Tish – portrayed, in a stunning screen debut, by KiKi Layne – embodies a certain stubborn, tremulous hope as she stands behind the counter of a brightly lit, New York department-store, surrounded by a selection of perfume bottles. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |