Befitting its title, “Beauty” looks nice, but much of what happens in this story of a black pop star set up to sign a record deal will be ugly. Beauty, played by Gracie Marie Bradley, stands in front of the recording studio’s microphone. This close-up image is repeated several times, challenging the expectations of the timeline by looping through what is what.
In this nimble and lyrical work, director Andrew Dosunmu and writer Lena Weiss mourn and tease the story of Whitney Houston. Think of the edgy elegy “beauty” that touches faith and economy, love and blame.
Giancarlo Esposito plays Beauty’s malicious father, and Nee Seanash is her aloud tough mother. Sharon Stone is committed to the role of Mephisto Feria as a record executive. “When God created her, she was a little flaunted,” she tells TV talk show host Irv Merlin (James Urbaniak). Doubts about the film’s interest in religious sanctuary and patriarchal atrocities are dispelled in the scene where Dad fights beauty brothers Abel (Kylebury) and Cain (Michael Ward) against each other.
Other shy gestures, like Irv’s name, suggest that they are closer to the Houston story, ending the biographical problem. Still, the movie remains an intriguing tax withholding. Can you hear the beauty singing? Will she and her romantic friend Jasmine (Areis Shannon) eventually “go there”? When they dance to Force MD’s slow jam jewel “Tender Love,” it’s romance, not sex, that gets the focus. Instead of avoidance, this feels like respect. The filmmaker respects that the actual star that was explicitly aroused here was not recognized, but does not name it.
beauty
Rating R for language and drug use. Execution time: 1 hour and 40 minutes. Watch it on Netflix.
