Lovers Rock REVIEW: What’s The Fuss About This Steve McQueen Film?
In Lovers Rock, Steve McQueen stays out of racial issues, to focus on young Black Londoners sweating it out on the dancefloor.
The second film in Steve McQueen’s Small Axe series has been wrapped in rave reviews, with critics giving it a 5-star rating. Really?! I guess there are certain subjects and directors whose basic reputation precedes them into the hall of fame. When it comes to depicting the hyphenated hardships of the Black community in Europe and America,Steve McQueen is next to none.
Sure enough the first film Mangrove in this anthology pulsated with racial power and cultural pride. Be warned. The second film in the anthology is an extended dance party strictly for Blacks. Set in the 1980s, the film hurls a torrent of men, women food conversation and, most of all ,music. Deep resounding pounding and undulating songs of the era which I grew up hearing. My favourite is the 1979 Janet Kaye slow-burning floor-burner “Silly Games”. This sinfully sexy catchy song plays in a hurl of swaying slithering bodies moving sensuously, sometimes so close to one another, my breath got choked just watching the dancers on the floor.
This film does to the track “Silly Games” what the film Mama Mia did to the Abba song of the same title. Steve McQueen’s camera moves in and out of the partying figures’ lives, there is stress and there but nothing that that can’t be controlled in the confines of the private home far partying the night away far away from racist law enforcement agents, trying to figure out why they are so blissful in their time-frozen oyster shell.
Indeed in this film McQueen stays out of racial issues, to focus on young Black Londoners sweating it out on the dancefloor. Into this cauldron of a foot-tapping brew and soul-stirring gaze, we are introduced to Micheal Ward and Amarah-Jae St. Aubyn as Franklyn and Martha, so lost in each other that they can barely hear the loud music. Their bodies react instinctively to the music,giving nothing away except their growing mutual affection.
By the time it’s morning they are so much love that the party seems like a pretext for their mutual ardour. Steve McQueen’s camera follows Martha home. She sneaks into her bedroom and her bed ,only to hear her mother commanding her to get ready for church.
Ah! So the party that Martha secretly attended and where she met her new love, were held on Saturday night.Well, all right then. Young Black people in the 1980s is not the same as Young people in present times. Throwing all care and caution to the winds, the young couple falls in love daring the protests against their mutual feelings to begin. Until the next dance.You wish it would never end. But then you realize McQueen doesn’t have much story to tell here. This is his most carefree film ever. He just wants to have fun with the young in the 1980s. The silly games are on.
Image source: IMDb
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