DeMane Davis and Khari Streeter’s low-budget Lift never quite escapes the gravity well of certain over-determined conflicts or plot dynamics, but that’s the only negative thing I’m going to say about it. After reading about this in some article (I think at Slate) about indie films that slip between the cracks, I stuck it on my Netflix queue and found it pretty damn rewarding. Niecy (an excellent, excellent Kerry Washington) is a young woman trying to move past service to more leadership roles at a department store, grappling with a complex relationship with her demanding mother (Lonette McKee), and struggling with a relationship with her trying-to-go-straight (off the pot, off the game) boyfriend (Eugene Byrd). Oh, and she makes a real good living by stealing the very finest of designer products.
The crime plot seems at first central, but becomes secondary; even the family dynamics become less crucial than the opportunities such plot twists afford for substantive, often startlingly good character development. Besides Washington, all of the minor characters escape the stock dimensions the plot (and certain kinds of indie or genre film) might delineate, but she really stands out–this is Niecy’s story, and simply as an opportunity to see this actress dig in is worth the price of admission. She has a fine, brief moment–late in the film when some shit has gone down, as shit does–lying on a bed, looking up to the ceiling; she sees a picture of herself, and we watch her seeing her self–and, again in a quick close-up, we see history, conflict, decisions being made–a really fine moment. These directors–who’ve seemingly disappeared after this pretty strong 2001 debut–have a real way with actors.
They also have an eye for the look of the film. Again, the budget can be seen on screen all too often in the real limits of production design and location shooting. But what they do with their camera–just the stuff as credits roll as the film opens–rushing headlong along city streets, capturing both a depiction of life in motion in the community and a sense of the urgency of motion which propels the film’s tensions….pretty impressive. They make some wonderful, idiosyncratic choices–a sort of musical dream sequence when Niecy is selling her hot goods to customers at a beauty shop. And it’s edited like a dream, amplifying the emotional heft and the occasional suspense of the film.
Again, it isn’t gonna change your life. But it’s the sort of film you might catch and then very much look forward to seeing what these artists will do next, and I was sort of shocked–or painfully unsurprised–to see that the directors, in particular, had not gone past this first film. I probably here ought to begin to try and make sense of the state of the independent film scene, both more accessible (to more producers) but also still tightly imbricated in a controlled market which rarely looks past the conventional. And if we were to try and make sense of “African-American film,” this is another in a long line of impressive first films that do not open the careers they ought to. (See also Killer of Sheep, Chameleon Street, maybe even Daughters of the Dust [‘though not a first film, a first ‘big’ film.)
i rented this because mike said we should and i always do what mike says. it’s a very neat film, and kerry washington, as mike says, is very very good in it. yes, this is her film. it’s good to see the way she and her character change register from vulnerable to pretty darn formidable, with all sorts of shades in between. i am a very rare viewer of african american films so i have little to nothing to compare this with, but the casting of this film — the black and white extras, the social landscape behind the main characters — reminded me of something walter mosley has easy rawlins say in his latest mistery: that black people live in a biracial world while white people live as if we were alone. so true.
which, with loose association for sure, makes me think of the pitch perfect (to me, but what do i know?) black characters of the wire, and of the fact that the vast majority of the show’s episodes are written by white writers. so sad.