Digital Review - Selah And The Spades (2019)

A film set in the closeted world of a prestigious boarding school would seem to have “coming of age” and “YA” written all over it. But not for debut writer/director Tayarisha Poe, who gleefully challenges and upturns the convention in Selah And The Spades to give us something altogether darker and sinister. Almost a Godfather in training.

Her love of gangster movies and film noir clearly inspires a feature that takes its teenager characters seriously, but doesn’t necessarily see itself as being aimed at them. The Selah (Lovie Simone) of the title is in her final year at Haldwell School, an expensive establishment that exists in its own bubble (note the lack of mobile phones, laptops and how notebooks are the order of the day). Five factions operating under the noses of the teachers dominate the school’s social life and Selah heads up the Spades, who control the sale of drugs and alcohol. But as her departure for college approaches, she needs to appoint a successor and hand over control. Choosing her replacement is easy, but letting go is anything but.

Selah unexpectedly opts for the much younger Paloma (Celeste O’Connor), several years below her at school and we see much of the film through her eyes, flattered by the attention paid to her by a senior student but with enough confidence to have her own ideas about how she’ll do the job once it’s hers. And, while the savvy Selah seems charming and caring, she finds it increasingly hard to relinquish control, setting up her right hand man for a beating and putting Paloma in danger, manipulating every situation to her advantage, regardless of the damaging fallout. It’s a bleak, unsettling portrait of a sociopath in the making and of a teenage sub-culture that actively encourages it. She controls just one of the factions but, given half a chance, she’d take over every single one of them.

There will be times when the adult audience that the film’s aimed at will shake their heads at the behaviour of the young people on the screen. But that’s the point. They’re not adults, even though they think they are, and their actions speak volumes for the people they could become. It’s not a promising outlook. However, Poe, as writer and director, shows a great deal of promise, especially in her collaboration with cinematographer Jomo Fray. There are some beautifully constructed shots making glowing use of colour and shape, although there are times when Fray can’t resist being a touch too showy and the result is some irritatingly jumpy camerawork which doesn’t add much to the narrative. Conversely, the moments when Selah breaks the fourth wall in a near classical style and addresses the audience directly are impactful and enlightening. The young ensemble cast is impressive, with a cold blooded performance from Lovie Simone as Selah and Celeste O’Connor as her intelligent protegee the standouts.

This isn’t just a high school movie for a high school audience, and the very fact that the story concentrates on the African American students rather than the white ones makes it all the more apparent that Poe has set out to break down the walls of the genre. She doesn’t wholly succeed, but does more than enough to whet our appetite for her sophomore feature, whatever that may be. For now, however, she’s created a disturbing portrait of the transition from teen to adult and painted it with some style.