by Jon Abrams
Juneteenth in America officially became a federal holiday in 2021, the first federal holiday to be named since 1983, when Martin Luther King Jr. Day was named. It celebrates the end of slavery in the US, although maybe not everyone in the US celebrates that, do they? This country still has so much work to do. The Miss Juneteenth pageant tradition is a way for young Black women to showcase their identity. Juneteenth as a holiday and a cause is not, as I understand it, automatically bundled with the pageant aspect: They are two things, though of course they aren’t entirely unrelated.
MISS JUNETEENTH is a narrative feature film, not a documentary. It doesn’t tell the story of Juneteenth, though it’s definitely a fitting movie to watch on June 19th. It’s about a single mother named Turquoise (the resplendent Nicole Beharie), who works hard and spends her spare time preparing her teen daughter Kai (Alexis Chikaeze of All American, who is perfect in the role) for Miss Juneteenth. While Turquoise remains at least in part still defined by her identity as a former Miss Juneteenth, Kai has zero interest in the pageant tradition. Still in the picture, sort of, is Kai’s father Ronnie (Kendrick Sampson, who is terrific in the part as a charming yet consistently disappointing picture of modern masculinity).
MISS JUNETEENTH isn’t an “activism” movie, not exactly. Turquoise’s life is too focused on the day-to-day realities for that. If anything, the movie reminded me of ALICE DOESN’T LIVE HERE ANYMORE, that movie that those idiotic Sc0rsese-only-makes-gangster-movies people always conveniently forget about. The genre is the women’s picture. In this day and age, with the majority of movies being made and marketed for teenage boys and grown men with the minds of teenage boys, that’s a bold, daring thing to make. Further complicating the matter was the COVID-19 pandemic. MISS JUNETEENTH arrived in American movie theaters on June 19th, 2020. Not a lot of people got out to see it. What a terrible shame.
The good news is that MISS JUNETEENTH is a film that doesn’t suffer too terribly when experienced at home. The cinematography by Daniel Patterson is warm and inviting, but the intimacies of the story and of the performances can be just as well appreciated up close. The whole cast is note-perfect, but the movie is engineered to live or die depending on the role played by Nicole Beharie (42), and does it ever live. With respect to her talent, there may be no more luminous camera subject on the planet Earth, which is part of the point, but only halfway. Turquoise is more than her beauty. The question is what she will become. And it’s not just about Turquoise. It’s about Kai. It’s even more about Kai. Keep in mind that the Miss Juneteenth pageant for Turquoise isn’t about vanity or “stage mom” vicarious living. She wants Kai to get that scholarship.
Turquoise as written and as played is more than capable, but there comes in life a time when endless promise must turn into delivered results (man, don’t I know it), and the angle on Turquoise’s circumstances is steep. Whether or not she can overcome is uncertain, but if you watch this movie, you’re going to be on her side.
It’s a beautifully simple film, but “simple” doesn’t mean unsurprising. This is a movie about parenting, about wanting the best for the next generation, about the pain of unfulfilled promise, about the need for finding reserves of resolve that appeared to have been gone long ago. It’s a great movie and I hope you get a chance to check it out. (At the moment you can find it on Starz, Hulu, Fubo, or Prime, though it may cost an extra couple bucks. It’s worth it.)
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Tags: Alexis Chikaeze, Channing Godfrey Peoples, History, Jon Abrams, Juneteenth, Kendrick Sampson, Maya Angelou, Movie Of The Day, Nicole Beharie, Texas
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