Filmmaker Tayarisha Poe makes her debut with teen noir 'Selah and the Spades,' a tale of teen angst and control set in a Pennsylvania boarding school.
To be a teenage girl at the top of her game is to be in an exhausting and perpetual war for control, at least for the poised title character of filmmaker Tayarisha Poe’s intoxicating debut, “Selah and the Spades.” Heathers, move over: Meet Selah Summers, a 17-year-old Lady Macbeth who’s worked hard to claw her way to the highest rung on the social ladder and looks warily toward life after high school.
Played with a dexterous duality by Lovie Simone , Selah’s got good reason to stay on high alert. At a prestigious Pennsylvania boarding school where the student body is separated into five cliques each led by iron-fisted rulers, the popular and ruthless queen bee heads up both the cheer squad and the Spades, the campus “faction” that deals in illicit substances and is embroiled in a power struggle with the drama club Bobbies.
Although its narrative momentum occasionally sputters, “Selah” builds an intriguing social ecosystem peppered with colorful side characters like the oft-peeved Bobby , head of the Bobbies, and Tarit , a savvy classmate of ambiguous allegiance who operates on the margins of the factions. They jump off the screen as the film’s plot careens toward the pivotal event in any teen movie: an all-consuming prom, where Shakespearean betrayals and buried histories bubble to the fore.
What’s behind Selah’s need to rule through fear, that tough exterior and the panic constantly bubbling beneath the surface? Scenes at home with her disapproving mother explain the pressure Selah carries and passes onto others and the desperation with which she clings to the social currency she’s accrued.
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