Lovers Rock Review Movie
Lovers Rock Review
Violence from the police, social unrest and struggles against the backdrop of systems that are endemically racist Much has been focused on how the historic themes in Steve McQueen's Small Axe feel uncannily relevant to the world of 2020. It's true (if we ignore all the evidence that suggests these topics were'soon for many a century or more). When it concerns Lovers Rock, there is an unmistakable irony in the realization that this magnificent and carnal ode to the force of dance floors is being released into the world of a society where dancing has been effectively banned. It's perhaps this mishap in timing which makes the final film in the BBC One anthology series feel as a truly potent masterpiece. Lovers Rock is simultaneously a essential exploration of culture and a romantic love story, and an intimate night out for people who are confined to their homes for the duration of the year.
The storyline — in the sense that there can be one revolves around Martha (Amarah-Jae St. Aubyn making a luminous screen debut, a star-making one) who sneaks from a window of her suburban house, going to a blues-themed reggae celebration located in West London, meeting a charming fellow Jamaican known as Franklyn (Top Boy's BAFTA Rising Star winner Micheal Ward) Then, she proceeds to have a fun party until the sun rises. However, the shrewdness of the story (in the script by McQueen and the author Courttia Newland) clears space for a loosely limbed sequence of vignettes as well as crotch-grinding music interludes that act as an intimate tribute to an under-appreciated time of Black British history. The opening sequences of the preparations for the party with speakers being brought into the living room and women cooking break off from chopping onion to play a rock tune , and close-ups showing hot irons running through hair an evocative quality that you could almost be able to smell Dax pomade and the bubbling Oxtail stew.
McQueen provides his fans with an exhilarating, sensual escape.
There is also the famous scene from UK reggae singer Janet Kay's 1979 smash hit song 'Silly Games", a thrilling extended musical escapism where the music speakers at the party are cut off and the audience sings the entire tune a cappella for the full duration of four minutes. McQueen has made this film based on actual memories of his aunt's escapades to blues-themed parties when she was youngerhas expressed his desire to see this moment, and the film being a remarkable expression of pure Black joy on the screen.
And it's very much that. However, one thing that make Lovers Rock so powerful is the social elements which made these moments of freedom so important to younger West Indians — which is to say, the hostile rough society outside the party's fearsome, flock-papered walls are never left behind. In the course of an amazing evening, McQueen gives his audience an enthralling sexually enthralling escape, as well as his characters an opportunity to be truly their own.
