A Barry Jenkins Film

Medicine for Melancholy (2008)
Seen: Saturday, March 29, 2008

I was not at SXSW to catch director Barry Jenkins' first feature Medicine for Melancholy on the big screen. Nor was I at Sarasota or L.A. or any other festival where the movie was screened this year (and it is probably safe to say I won't be at Toronto either), but I guess having long-time friends who are working their way into the business has paid off ever so slightly, because my pal Barry generously sent me a DVD screener of Medicine, which I am happy to report was picked up by IFC Films for theatrical distribution in 2009.

When I put his movie in the DVD player I was struck with a little conundrum, What if I didn't like it? As someone pursuing a legitimate (read: paid) career in film criticism, if the movie wasn't any good I had to be honest about that. Still, the author of the film being my friend, it would be a terribly awkward and hurtful moment to have him read this potentially bad review. But I sucked it up and decided it was business. And then the movie played and all of that anxiety disappeared--Medicine for Melancholy is a poetic montage of the San Francisco cityscape and two nascent lovers, set to an indie music soundtrack that alternates between youthfully energetic and melancholic.

And I suppose that's the best way to understand Medicine, as a tale of ambivalence, first between Micah (Wyatt Cenac) and Jo (Tracey Higgins) as they wake in the shameful light of the morning after a one-night-stand, and later as they try to feel out one another's personalities. There's a constant push and pull between the two young lovers, which is centered upon one essential common characteristic: they are both black.

Race is the primary subject of exploration, but Medicine works precisely to avoid conflation with the greater social and cultural issues that that topic embodies; the conflict for Micah and Jo is manifest in a series of conversations about blackness. Micah bites with condescension and contempt for Jo's interracial relationship; he comes to life, has a sort of energy that bubbles up when this prime opportunity knocks to confirm his suspicion of Jo's commitment to a white boyfriend. It is almost as if her boyfriend is the subsidy that supports her existence in San Francisco's urban space, which has been gentrified at a murderous rate.

While we wouldn't believe for a second that Jo's boyfriend (who we never see, and who we know only through Jo's one-sided responses to him via cell phone) is acting out of white guilt and providing reparations for institutionalized racism, there is also a pointed moment when we learn Jo lives for free under her boyfriend's roof, while she herself is still "figuring it out."

But Medicine doesn't linger on these moments for long, and is balanced with small delights like a color-saturated montage of San Francisco's sites and skyline, a cute homage to Godard's Breathless (1960) as Micah flashes faces in the bathroom mirror, and very simply, in its sum total, Medicine is a playful picture to look at. Amidst some rather serious moments are a spattering of jokes, the quiet ones that go unnoticed in everyday conversation.

As the movie begs the question, What does it mean that out of the 7% African American population in San Francisco, Micah and Jo found each another last night?, there is no commitment to a sense of fate in their meeting, nor is there an algorithm put forth for pragmatic understanding either. In other words, this is a social drama with romantic elements of a very earnest and exploratory nature.

This measured tone transforms even the most heavy-handed scenes into profound ones. As the black couple strolls into the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD), Jo whispers, "I didn't even know it was here." Quietly they meander through the museum corridors. The name "MAYA ANGELOU" is etched on the frame like a title card, until the door it is printed on swings open and the two cross its threshold. In a previous scene, they ascend a staircase along a vast collage of disconnected faces in black history: they are suddenly connected to an identity that is quickly being forgotten. It is in this instance that a seemingly innocent affair from the night before takes on a sobering importance.