If Beale Street Could Talk is, perhaps, just a little too beautiful. Maybe that aesthetic perfection works at too awkward an angle to the political anger that fires the drama. Adapted from a James Baldwin novel of the same name, If Beale Street Could Talk follows a New York couple caught up in the malign jumble of legal evasions and societal dishonesties that worked to constrain African-Americans in the 1960s (and do now). You don’t expect to see these arguments made through a cinematic language derived from Wong Kar-wai and Jacques Demy. Tish (KiKi Layne) and Fonny (Stephan James) have been friends forever and lovers for some time.

Source: The Irish Times February 06, 2019 11:26 UTC