‘A raw, unguided love’ Queen & Slim review

Melina Matsoukas’s directorial debut showcases injustice from every angle. Graduating from award-winning music videos and television shows, her direction of lauded romantic crime drama Queen & Slim raucously verifies the overwhelmingly positive opinion of her talent.

Queen & Slim raucously verifies the overwhelmingly positive opinion of Matsoukas’s talent.

The story of Queen & Slim was fertilised from Matsoukas’s own experience and consumption of American cinema: the 39-year-old observes how she “didn’t grow up seeing dark-skinned people fall in love on screen”. Speaking outwardly of police brutality during interviews, Matsoukas undertakes a raw exhibit of injustice.

We begin inside a Cleveland diner, bathed in a dulled, natural hue, before encroaching on an airy first date between Earnest (Daniel Kaluuya) and Angela (Jodie Turner-Smith). Angela, a supercilious lawyer, questions the unassumingly modest, slouched Earnest as they meet for a date. Between Angela’s judgmental opening gambits and Kaluuya conveying the same ironic, deadpan comedy he mastered in Get Out, an instant magnetism pulls towards Earnest.

Their differences in opinion and demeanour highlight the incompatibility of the two characters, making the opening scene light-hearted. We pine for Earnest’s success in the date. A cursory atmosphere reading impresses that this is a scene firmly rooted in a 70s aesthetic, with Angela draped in a suede jacket and leather knee-high boots, before being quickly subverted by a humdrum revelation: it’s a Tinder date. We’re pulled back into the now – this is a modern picture. The issues in the story are a direct comparison to the present.

The regretfully unsuccessful date finishes in a lift back home for Angela and a definitive ‘no’ to hopes of erotica for Earnest. Any comical supposition the film has shown from the beginning extinguishes once red and blue flashes onto the screen and a siren flares. Earnest and Angela are pulled over by a white cop. A minor traffic violation spirals out of control and catastrophe strikes. In quick motion, Angela is shot in the leg and the cop is left on the floor, dead, after Earnest disarms him and pulls the trigger. The pair race away as ‘Queen’ and ‘Slim’ descend into an unavoidably Bonnie and Clyde phenomenon.

Driving from native Ohio across to the coastal south of Florida, Cuba is the tearaways’ destination. The heroes (are they antiheroes? Does it matter?) ride through the beautiful Americana landscape in a harrowingly true reflection of how one can always try and enjoy the beauty of these here United States, but must ultimately always have to ‘watch your six’, second-guessing how much fun you might have for the sake of living for another day.

A battle unfolds for two innocent fugitives on the run, rebranded as dangerous, rebellious media caricatures. Most of society buys into the agitators image, whilst the rest are inspired by the chances of it ending in a furore, a crumbling of an establishment perceived to be the enemy of its constituents.

A battle unfolds for two innocent fugitives on the run, rebranded as dangerous, rebellious media caricatures.

But is this really the story of a ‘Black Bonnie and Clyde’? On one side of the divide is a story of two citizens whose entire being was painted as criminal. On the other, an emotive romance builds off fears for survival which, for millions of Americans, is in the hands of a frighteningly powerful State they believe can criminalise the innocent, despite their right to life.

Earnest and Angela’s series of wretched events contours a bond not many can empathise with. A raw, unguided love. It is a terrifically tactile film, filled with a divine landscape, a script from Lena Waithe that flows like poetry and a soundtrack that fits perfectly. All of this set against the backdrop of police brutality makes for a beautiful love story. Who would have thought?