Medicine for Melancholy

“Everything about being indie is tied to not being black,” says Micah (Wyatt Cenac), half of the accidental kind-of couple whose one-day romance is chronicled in “Medicine for Melancholy.” He is making an observation — and also registering a complaint — about the quasi-bohemian way of life he shares with Jo' (Tracey Heggins), his temporary other half.

“MEDICINE FOR MELANCHOLY,” an independent feature by the first-time writer-director Barry Jenkins, opens the morning after a one-night stand. Micah and Jo, who don’t yet know each other’s names, are young and black, and for want of a more descriptive term you might call them hipsters. In San Francisco, where the African-American population is less than 7 percent and where “black indie kids” (to use [...] Vai alla recensione »

The bed is strange, the bedfellow a stranger and just what happened before morning nudged those sleeping shoulders awake is lost in the tangle of sheets that was last night. This is how writer-director Barry Jenkins pulls us into his introspective first feature, "Medicine for Melancholy," giving us no clue in those initial moments just how complex its themes will be, packaged as they are in this tiniest [...] Vai alla recensione »