Movie review: For Colored Girls

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As for the men in the picture, there's a childbeater (and worse); the aforementioned two-timer; Tangie's series of cloddish, insensitive one night stands; and a rapist in nice guys' clothing — right up to the point where he unexpectedly strips out of it.

Cheery, no?
In fact, For Colored Girls is a compelling, well-acted, and emotionally jarring drama filled with grand poetic soliloquies, folklore, mysticism, and hard-earned life lessons. At 134 minutes, it's also a grueling two-plus-hour sit-through that would benefit enormously from an intermission. (And there's a perfect place for it, about halfway through the narrative.)

The personal dramas of the various women play out partially in parallel and occasionally in overlapping episodes, with a final coming together at the end in a grand communal kumbaya moment. Perry employs a straightforward, almost naive style of cinematography (working with director of photography Alexander Gruszynski), featuring lots of long focus pulls. His most memorable artistic ploy involves the juxtaposition of operatic performance art against an act of brutal violation — I'm not sure what message we're supposed to take away from that sequence, but it weighs heavily in the imagination.

Singling out a specific actor for praise amongst this high-powered ensemble seems a futile endeavor, though I will point to the gut-wrenching performances of Elise and Michael Ealy (as Crystal's deeply-troubled boyfriend Beau Willie) as being particularly effective.

See For Colored Girls for its poignancy and its poetry — just don't expect to be all smiley-faced when you're making your way out to the lobby afterwards.

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