“I consider myself normal, whatever that means,” says Nola Darling, but she really isn’t. For one thing, she’s happily juggling three lovers. For another, she’s an African-American woman telling her own story in a movie.
What’s more, the heroine of Lee’s feature debut, played by Tracy Camilla Johns, is a confident, beautiful, independent, sex-positive woman. She seems to live the dream. She makes political collages in her loft apartment in pre-gentrification Brooklyn. Her candlelit bedchamber resembles a church altar, which is appropriate. It looks as if she’s got it all figured out.
Her menfolk don’t see it that way: proud, mature, old-fashioned Jamie wants her to marry him and settle down; moneyed, iron-pumping narcissist Greer sees her as his ideal accessory; proto-hipster clown Mars Blackmon (played by Lee himself) is so smitten by Nola, and she’s so out of his league, it’s embarrassing. Oh, and there’s the lesbian Opal, who’d happily satisfy her bi-curiosity. Of course, Nola’s equilibrium cannot hold, and once her menfolk start comparing notes, things get ugly. Even today, Nola Darling is an audaciously modern proposition – which is why Lee could revive her for his Netflix series last year, set in the present day. The treatment is similarly modern: the movie has a breezy, conversational honesty to it, with its jazzy score, black-and-white images (including still photographs), and direct-to-camera monologues. It’s closer to the French New Wave than anything that had passed for “black cinema” up to that point.
It’s no surprise Nola has become something of a cultural icon: she had so little competition. If you want to understand why we’ve had so few African-American coming-of-age stories until fairly recently, look at how hard Lee had to work to get She’s Gotta Have It made. The budget was so tight he had to get the crew to save empty drinks cans to get the deposits back. His producer spent every night on the telephone after the day’s shooting, phoning around friends begging for donations. And Lee then had to fight the censors (whom he felt were racially biased) and make cuts to the sex scenes to avoid an X certificate.
Considering it was made by a man, She’s Gotta Have It is remarkably attuned to Nola’s worldview. She is a fully rounded character: complex, contradictory, forthright. “I’m a good listener,” is how Lee once explained his facility with a female point of view, “and if you really try to go about the truth and honesty in your work, then you can hurdle my not being a woman.” He stopped short of describing She’s Gotta Have It as “feminist”, though: “[There’s a] double standard. So I decided, let’s make a film about a woman who is actually living her life as a man.”
You could say that Nola is punished for her lifestyle choices but she’s more a victim of pride: her own and that of her male lovers. The movie doesn’t really judge any of its characters, but Lee interrogates the vanities, hypocrisies, desires and misplaced passions of young, black masculinity. She’s Gotta Have It is squarely concerned with African-American community and culture. There’s barely a white person to be seen. As such, the movie gave viewers of all colours a refreshing modern-day perspective on African Americans at a time when they were more likely to be depicted in movies as slaves, victims and, in the case of men, violent abusers (Lee hated Spielberg’s The Color Purple, for example). But its questions and themes are also universal: the boundaries between love and sex; the differences between men and women; the reckless courage of youth.
What’s your favourite coming-of-age film? Let us know in the comments and we’ll publish a selection of your highlights to the final piece.
