Pariah

Plot synopsis:
Alike is a 17-year-old African American girl who hangs out at clubs with her openly lesbian friend Laura. Alike slowly and firmly comes to terms with her own identity as a butch lesbian, comfortable in baggy clothes and male underwear. Her mother Audrey approves of neither her clothes nor her friendship with Laura. Harboring growing suspicions about Alike's sexuality, Audrey forces her to wear feminine clothing and tries to stem any influence from Laura by pushing Alike to instead make friends with Bina, a young girl from her church. Alike has a better relationship with her father Arthur, who is a police officer.
Alike begins to develop feelings for Bina, and starts spending more time with her than with Laura, much to Laura's annoyance. Arthur comes back late a few times from work, which angers Audrey and the two of them fight often. Arthur does not think much about the changes in Alike's life. Believing them to be just a phase, he is supportive of her, though he remains in denial about her sexual identity.
One night after going to see an alternative rock band, Alike and Bina are alone in Bina's room when Bina begins caressing and kissing Alike. Alike is at first hesitant, having had no prior experience with physical intimacy. However, she eventually responds and the two spend the night together. In the morning, Alike talks to Bina about where they want their relationship to go, but Bina says there is no relationship, as she is not "really gay" and only regarded their physical encounter as playful indulgence. Her only further interest in Alike seems to be her concern that Alike not tell anyone else about the two of them. Hurt and upset, Alike leaves and returns home and cries for hours.
During that time, Audrey and Arthur have an explosive fight about Alike. Despite her sister Sharonda's protests, Alike decides to intervene in the fight and she comes out to her parents. Disgusted, Audrey viciously attacks Alike while Arthur tries to restrain her. Alike flees to Laura's house where the two friends reconcile. Audrey then tries to forget that anything happened, which annoys the rest of her family. Arthur comes to meet with Alike, apologizes for Audrey's actions and requests that Alike come back home, offering half-hearted assurance that if she does, "things will be different". Alike says that she will not return home, but instead plans to move to California to begin college early. She assures her father that, "I'm not running; I'm choosing."
Before leaving, Alike makes an attempt to reconcile with her mother as well. However, her mother refuses to accept her and offers only that she will be praying for Alike. Arthur, Sharonda and Laura see Alike off on her journey west and the film ends with Alike reading a poem she wrote; its theme echoes her words to her father that she is not running, but choosing.

Tags: queer

Review:
They may not have even chosen to watch it, like I almost did, because of the synopsis which calls this a film about a "teenager's desperate search for sexual expression".
Kim Wayans, best down for her broad comic characterizations from the 1990's In Living Color, shows off her dramatic chops as Alike's mother Audrey, a Christian-valued matriarch who doesn't have so much an agenda, but an affliction.
Unlike most black men in films about black women, Alike's father Arthur (a stalwart, yet relaxed Charles Parnell) doesn't always have his daughter's (or wife's) best intentions in mind, but he's neither shiftless, emasculated, physically abusive or non-existent as is every man in The Color Purple and the like.
In an ironic twist, Audrey introduces Alike to the daughter of a coworker, in hopes of steering her away from the butch influence of her best friend Laura (a cool, thoughtful Pernell Walker).
But as far as to my knowledge there never has been a coming of age movie, involving a lesbian character, set in the African-American community.
Who knows, maybe there are age groups and persons out there who went through somewhat the same things and struggles as the movie its main character, who will get grabbed more by this movie and feel emotional involved with it, all the way through.For me, this movie was still absolutely being one fine, little genre movie, despite that I still had some issues with it.8/10 http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/.
The film around a seventeen year old girl, black and lesbian in an urban neighborhood, that is trying to come of age in a time where she is placed into the rare category of being "a minority within a minority." She has some friends, a distant relationship with her parents (not uncommon in teens), and, at the end, her future still has rays of light peaking through the gloom.
I have hope for her, and believe that labeling her as a "pariah" is a bit too harsh.The seventeen year old is named Alike (A-lie-kah, played by Adepero Oduye).
She finds it harder and harder to keep her desires and orientation concealed from her family, and, like most girls around that age, resorts to peer discussions which serve as her motivation.Let's stop right there; it takes no expert to realize that this is a cliché premise.
Pariah gets involved with a number of different areas in film, that usually go untouched in a coming of age picture.For one, atmosphere is put to great use here.
Both stories depict lonely protagonists, hungering for acceptance in society, but are continuously left lost, wandering in the sea of despair.Movies like Pariah are wonderful because they showcase new talents in a familiar world.
Spike Lee serves as one of the executive producers, and in many ways, from the gritty writing to the unsettling atmosphere (just like in Do the Right Thing and Malcolm X) it mirrors a film he could've made.Not to mention, aside from the film's behind the scenes work, it is also a beauty performance-wise.
Adepero Oduye is forced to carry a grand weight of the film on her back, and accepts the challenge almost effortlessly, and Kim Wayans as the blatantly harsh mother, holding back fits of rage and attitude is also a well unsung role.
If it keeps up, Dee Rees could become the female Spike Lee.Starring: Adepero Oduye, Kim Wayans, and Aasha Davis.
There are three things, Dee Rees told the audience of the 2011 Out In Africa South African Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, that they shouldn't say in a pitch: "black", "lesbian" and "coming of age"; a true but problematic piece of advice.
It's just that, in one way or another, the message should be conveyed that Rees's debut feature Pariah is a film about the essence of being.Alike (Adepero Oduye) is a teenage Brooklyn girl who is struggling to live up to her mother's expectations while trying to figure out who she is.
And caught up between a controlling, disappointed and worried mother (Kim Wayans) and a disillusioned, tired and caring father (Charles Parnell), Alike, just like her parents and sister (Sahra Mellesse), is stuck in a suffocating web of lies that is keeping the fragile family unit from imploding, while preventing the family members from becoming all that they could be.Dee Rees and her phenomenal cast don't shy away from complexity and contradiction.
I didn't know what to expect except that I knew the girl was a lesbian.This flick features TRULY gifted and believable actors...from the main character, Alike, and her pains and trials, to her young sister in high school and the parents...OMGSH, the parents...and her friend Laura was incredible too.
It's almost like you come to know them.Here, folks, is what to expect from the movie Pariah: this is an emotional film.
She tackles a tough subject - same sex relationships among African American women - with such insight and care to details that her film jumps off the screen screaming as in the words of her heroine 'I'm not running - I'm choosing': lesbian girls are not God's mistake (to quote the mother figure) but instead have the courage to accept their difference and embrace their sexuality and still become successful members of society.Alike/Lee (Adepero Oduye, a fine young actress who hails from Brooklyn by way of Nigeria, a graduate of Cornell University who has studied acting with Wynn Handman, Austin Pendleton, and Susan Batson) is a 17-year old sexually conflicted girl who lives in Brooklyn with her younger very bright sister Sharonda (Sahra Mellesse) and her parents - police detective father Arthur (Charles Parnell) and conservative, overprotective, biased mother Audrey (Kim Wayans).
At a point of no return she is confronted by her parents and the manner in which she makes her decision as to 'run or choose' provides the ending of the story.The cast is uniformly strong and though Adepero Oduye makes a show-stopping debut, the other actors are equally superb.
But the genius of the film is in the concept and the courage and in the amazing gift for creating meaning cinema that comes across as the work of Dee Rees.
PARIAH does have themes about staying strong in the face of adversity, but just like Brokeback Mountain and Albert Nobbs, this film is also about being true to oneself and about acceptance.
PARIAH is a bold, courageous feature debut by writer/director Dee Rees and a noteworthy performance by lead actress Adepero OduyeThis obviously is not the first film to champion LGTB but what makes it intriguing, at least in my book, is that it's probably one of the few I've seen, to convey LGTB story by way of urban black neighborhood.
Writer/director Dee Rees is not afraid to push the conflicts, to emphasize how hard it is to come out and how frustrating it is for a lesbian to get used to the fact that she may never be allowed to come home to the family she loves.
With a dysfunctional family disguised in conservatism and old fashioned values, the film gives the lead character Alike even more reason to break away and choose her self.-- www.Ramascreen.com --.
Another good movie that she did is 2011's "Pariah", about a black teenager embracing her identity as a lesbian.
Dee Rees' debut feature, a coming-out drama expanding from her 2007 short of the same name, pivots on a 17-year-old Alike (Oduye, reprises the same role), an African-American girl maladroitly explores her inchoate sexuality against a stifling familial interference.
But Dee Rees, against the story's well-trodden path (although, both her and Alike's ethnic attributes give its story an edge of freshness), lends Alike's bittersweet rite-of-passage a distinct flavor of probity and plausibility that refuses to sweet the pill.Little doubt is cast on Alike's self-identification as a lesbian, the meat of her day-to-day battle is with the world around her, and pointedly with her family, Audrey (Wayans), her God-bothering mother high-handedly reproves her inappropriate get-up and choice of friend, her bestie is Laura (Walker), an out-and-out butch, masking her crush by ushering Alike to the local lesbian haunts.
While Dee Rees and her DP Bradford Young grace the story with a raw, restive energy that best encapsulates Brooklyn's milieu of black urban teenagers, Alike's story is sustained by its self-contained environs with exclusively non-white characters, no racial tension is broached, homophobia is pandemic, in home and elsewhere, but a touching note is that among younger generations, acceptance becomes the normalcy.
A factoid might completely knock one's socks off, Adepero Oduye is 33 when making this film and a further burrowing discovers that Aasha Davis, who plays her fellow high-schooler Bina, is born in 1973 (source from IMDb), it is sheer beggar belief that these actresses can pull off playing characters half their ages (a blessing bestowed to the race maybe), especially in the case of Oduye, animatedly effuses teen spirit and simmering angst in her breakthrough performance.
Among grown-ups there are also worthy players, although comparatively in a lesser extent, Charles Parnell (a younger-looking Keith David, anyone?) adeptly balances his benevolent father figure with his less savory image of a miffed and cheating husband as Arthur, Alike's father; then Kim Wayans, the mega-villain in this shoestring production, is another monstrous mother figure in the spirit of Monique is Lee Daniels' PRECIOUS (2009), less blustering but equally toxic and intractable.A decisively unsentimental entry in the queer cinema and a resounding testing ground of Dee Rees' acumen and auteurist disposition, PARIAH is here to stay..
It took 4 years to get to the finish line to release the movie - the finances, the actors, the longer scripts and the rehearsals under tight budgetary constraints.But in the end, what we see is a beautiful coming to age film of a young teenage girl Alike (played fabulously by stunning beautiful Adepero Oduye - her first break) who evolves to find her sexuality and heart break within a dis-functional family (any surprises there?) with a religious strict Catholic mother Audrey (played to perfection by Kim Wayans) Audrey is a regular caring mother who is unhappy and scared about her daughter Alike's behavior as a tom-boy and about Alike's friend, thus she introduces Alike to one of her colleagues daughter - who invariably initiates Alike into a same-sex love and turns her down breaking Alike's heart into pieces.
But with this experience Alike realizes her sexuality and during a confrontation with her parents - she declares "I am a lesbian" to the utter dis-belief of Audrey who beats her up.Alike leaves the house forever and joins a English literature program - breaking free and finding LOVE.*******Director Dee Rees who has written and directed this movie has worked very hard and it shows in every frame on the screen.The scenes are so well written that start at a point and lead to a final conclusion that takes the movie forward while introducing each character traits to fill in the gaps of the journey of Alike.No wonder the film bagged 15 international awards and 28 nominations in various categories - mainly director, actress (in main lead) and actress in supporting role and best movie.I do not like the movies with hand-held camera - but Dee Ree and her editor has done a brilliant job in cutting and editing the pieces with smoothness.The atmosphere of New York's black downtown area is taken superbly with the spaces in school and evening hang outs in clubs reflecting the real culture of new millennium teenagers.The cinematography and music are excellent.
Alike (pronounced ah-lee-kay) is only able to act like herself around her best friend Laura (Pernell Walker), who is openly gay, extroverted, and unafraid to speak her mind.
With her 4.0 GPA and stirring demeanor, she will, no doubt, succeed in life — yet this small window of her 18th year feels like an eternity to this charismatic young woman.Pariah is a coming-of-age story of sorts, but unlike its sappy peers it has something real, something rousing.
Its story could be applied to anyone's life, regardless of sexuality, because it is a film that magnifies that awkward transition in high school where the kid starts to realize that their adult wings are sprouting while their parents, in denial, want to clip them so they can have their precious baby safely in their nest for just a few more years.
It could destroy the comfortable repression that hangs over her life, but if she doesn't, she'll be someone else's version of Alike while the real one is confined to a psychological jail cell.Dee Rees, in her directorial debut, handles Pariah with sensitivity and a strong sense of affection that makes us care deeply about Alike's struggle with her identity.
Alike's story resonates with such power because Rees takes the time to study the people she will eventually come out to, spending scenes with them so that we can consider their ticks, their neuroses.
Rees is so delicate with her characters that even the harshest of a reaction rings with sympathy because we know, and, more importantly, understand, the reason for it.But of course, Pariah's tear-jerking sensibilities wouldn't have the same potency without Adepero Oduye, who portrays Alike with virulent sweetness.
We see Rees juggle around her qualities when a Brooklyn teenager named Alike (Adepero Oduye) juggles conflicting identities and risks friendship, heartbreak, and family in a desperate search for sexual expression.
Rees clearly shows her compassion for making characters, but she doesn't quite yet know how to make a feature film that isn't all about the characters.
It just wants to tell its story, which makes it that much more endearing.The storytelling is at some points frustrating because a lot of things that are insinuated are not fully developed, leaving the viewer without any real closure about any of the other characters besides the lead.
It tells the story about a student and aspiring writer named Alike who lives with her Christian mother Audrey, her father Arthur who is a police officer and her little sister Sharondra.
Alike's parents are not aware of their daughter's sexual orientation and her mother is not happy about her friendship with Laura, so in an attempt to get Alike's attention away from her best friend, she introduces her to a girl named Bina.
This modestly romantic, intimate, humorous and atmospheric coming-of-age drama which is set in Brooklyn, New York City in USA and where expressing one's sexuality becomes as crucial for a woman's personality as for her confidence to find the courage to follow her aspirations, is impelled and reinforced by it's cogent narrative structure, substantial character development, natural characters and the commendable acting performances by American actresses Adepero Oduye, Pernell Walker and Aasha Davis.
Pariah (2011)*** 1/2 (out of 4) A 17-year-old Brooklyn teenager (Adepero Oduye) must try and deal with her changing sexual feelings as well as deal with her parents (Charles Parnell, Kim Wayans) who can't fully see that she's beginning to have lesbian feelings for another local teen.
I'm sure PARIAH was someone inspired by PRECIOUS, another film dealing with a black teen trying to come to terms with their own lifestyle as well as the troubled relationship with a parent.
This film here comes from director Dee Rees and she does an incredibly strong job bringing it to the screen.
'Pariah' is the feature length expansion of a short film created by Dee Rees, presented at the Sundance Festival in 2007.
It's basically a coming of age story focusing on a middle-class, black Lesbian teenager, Alike, played by Adepero Oduye.
The title 'Pariah', is a bit of a strong epithet to describe Alike's situation, as she's mainly an outcast in the eyes of her mother Audrey (Kim Wayans), a devout Christian, who can't stomach the idea that her daughter is not really interested in men.'Pariah' is uniformly well-acted with a slow-moving plot that holds few surprises.
All the stock characters are there including the 'villain' of the piece, the aforementioned intolerant mother as well as the more sympathetic police detective father, Arthur, who's not crazy about his daughter's choice of sexual orientation but still holds a special place in his heart for 'daddy's girl'.
Alike declares her independence when she reveals to her father that she's been accepted into a creative writing program and asks his permission to sign papers so she can leave home.I suspect that deep down, 'Pariah' has garnered so many accolades not because it's a great film, but precisely because critics wish to encourage the film's creator, Ms. Rees, who apparently has much more talent as a director than a screenwriter.
It's strongly suggested, though, that he doesn't appreciate having to work extra to accommodate Audrey's excessive spending.One of the greatest strengths of "Pariah," director Dee Rees' feature-length expansion of her own 2007 short film, is that its themes are universal.
If you can relate to any of this, or to any other circumstances I didn't mention, this movie will speak to you.Lee's best friend is an open lesbian named Laura (Pernell Walker), who lives with her sister and is trying to earn her GED.
In her 2011 film, Pariah, director Dee Rees examines the events of a lesbian adolescent female named Alike's life as she grows up in Brooklyn with her family that refuses to acknowledge her sexuality.
From the start of the film, Alike's experience of growing up while also beginning the process of 'coming out' with her sexuality is demonstrated to be painstakingly discreet.
This is shown in the scene in which Alike takes the bus home from the club and changes out of her tomboy-look into more effeminate clothing and puts on earrings, so as to prevent her mother from discovering her sexuality (Serwer 1).
The film Pariah examines the struggles faced by those growing up gay in a society that does not yet fully accept them for who they are, and especially not their sexuality.
"Film Review: "Pariah" and the Untold Stories in Black Cinema." Mother Jones (2011): 1.
Audrey (Kim Wayans), Alike's mother, struggles because she knows, but doesn't want to know.