The coming-out/coming-of-age story gets a new voice in Dee Rees’ very fine feature, “Pariah. ” The film is based on her 2007 short of the same name.
Rees makes her protagonist Alike’s (Adepero Oduye) emotions visible from the onset. “Pariah” clearly indicates how much energy Alike spends changing in and out of her clothes to become — or hide — “Lee,” her AG (aggressive) butch identity. Her emotional struggle is palpable in every minute of “Pariah.” Such is the film’s urgency.
Alike is out to her best friend Laura (Pernell Walker), a butch high-school dropout, but almost no one else. Alike’s religious mother, Audrey (Kim Wayans), suspects her daughter is a lesbian. “I’m tired of [her] tomboy,” she laments. Mom obviously objects to Laura. Audrey asks her husband, Arthur (Charles Parnell), to talk to his daughter about her sexuality. Given that Arthur threatens a man who makes a degrading comment about his daughter and her masculine appearance, this is not going to be a conversation he wants to have any time soon.
“Pariah” sets up the family dynamics that build to the expected confrontation: a searing, shattering moment. Until that time, Alike consistently fights with her mother about everything from her curfew to her appearance. Not helping matters, the well-intentioned Audrey buys her daughter pink blouses that Alike has no intention of wearing. Alike’s relationship with her father is more loving. She is often called “Daddy’s Girl.” A scene in a kitchen, when Alike and Arthur discuss things they both know about the other without actually saying what they want to (or should) express, is particularly vivid. Rees shoots these episodes, like most of the film, in a kitchen-sink style, and they provide the realistic “Pariah” with its emotional core.
Another strength of the film is that Rees and Oduye make Alike’s character ingratiating from the start. She is a smart student and a bright writer who pens poems about butterflies suffocating in their cocoons — an apt, if obvious, metaphor for her own feelings. In school, Alike tends to keep to herself. In fact, she tries to be invisible, eavesdropping on the conversations of other girls, or trying not to be seen. Episodes where she transforms her appearance — on a late-night bus, or in the high-school bathroom — testify to this; they expose her lack of self-confidence. Alike’s poetry teacher suggests she “go deeper,” and this advice extends to mean that she needs to investigate her sexual identity further.
Although Alike is anxious to explore her sexuality, she is also afraid. In one early comic scene, she asks Laura to help her get a strap-on to possibly seduce a girl she is crushed on at a club. In a later, potent dramatic moment, Alike experiences heartbreak, and turns over trashcans in the streets and messes up her room in rage. These scenes adeptly illustrate the high-strung emotions of a confused teenager, grappling with her desires.
A large part of “Pariah” depicts Alike’s relationship with Bina (Aasha Davis), a student at her school that Audrey wants her daughter to befriend. While the two teens initially have little in common, they soon bond over music. Their friendship develops into a romance that helps Alike express her true self — cautiously at first, and then completely.
“Pariah” represents this maturation visually as well. (The film justly won a prize for cinematography at Sundance earlier this year). In early scenes, there are blurry sources of light that, over the course of the film, become sharper, as Alike herself finds clarity. Rees composes her shots with a keen eye. At times, the director frames Alike in silhouette. This adds dimension to — and reinforces the meanings of — Alike’s gender, sexuality and identity.
Rees carefully explores these themes, but also lets her characters reveal themselves. Alike has many scenes where she smiles privately or proudly — playing basketball with her father, during her budding romance with Bina — and her glow is infectious.
“Pariah” succeeds because of Oduye’s impressive turn in the title role. She makes Alike’s transformation, with all its joy and heartbreak, moving. Kim Wayans, however, is a bit one-note as Audrey, a woman who means well but comes across as a bit of a monster. That said, a lunch scene late in the film between mother and daughter is particularly chilling.
Rees may have made a familiar coming-out story, but its reliance on the tropes do not make Alike’s articulation of her desires and frustrations seem cliché.
Filmmaker gets personal for ‘Pariah’
Out African-American filmmaker Dee Rees is going to command considerable attention for her debut feature, “Pariah.” Based on her 2007 short — which she completed as her final project before graduating New York University — the film depicts the struggles of a Brooklyn teenager, Alike (Adepero Oduye), coming out and coming of age.
Looking back on her teenage years, Rees described herself as “quiet and introverted. I was a bookworm.” African-American women authors like Alice Walker, Toni Morrison and Toni Cade Bambara shaped her world.
Rees speaks quickly, but thoughtfully and with enthusiasm. “Through them, I kind of came of age. I couldn’t watch a lot of things unless it was PG. But what I could read — it was carte blanche. I was reading ‘Iceberg Slim’ and all these racy and feminist texts without censorship. I’m grateful for that.”
While writers inspired Rees to become a filmmaker, it was screenwriting that prompted her to develop “Pariah.” She explained, “It seemed like a way to bring the story to life. Writing a novel wasn’t the way I wanted to express myself.”
Her script is authentic, and full of slang, such as the use of the term “AG” for aggressive — the type of butch Alike tries to be and her friend Laura is.
“We really wanted to push the audience without explaining. We know the audience is smart and they should be able to get it,” Rees said.
All the central characters in the film get important storylines, and how the characters communicate — or don’t — is what makes the film so engaging.
“I think ‘Pariah’ is about loneliness — each [character] feels like a pariah — isolated in some way. This is a film of people feeling that they don’t have a place,” the director said.
Rees came out when she was 27. Reflecting back on the experience, she observed, “Although I was independent, I still had to figure out how to be in the world. I knew that I loved women — that wasn’t the question — my question was how to be. I was feeling I wasn’t hard enough, or soft enough, I was kind of somewhere in between. I realized that respecting gender identity was a big deal for me — and also that my spirituality and my sexuality weren’t mutually exclusive. I had to get my parents to understand that I am the same person as I had been.”
Words are important in chronicling Alike’s coming out. The film uses the her poetry to chart this, and images of a butterfly and a cocoon, or breaking free/open are vivid and revealing.
Rees reinforces the transformation theme with costumes and visuals. She said, “I had a color palate for Alike. She starts out being cocooned in drab. Her color palate starts out very brown and baggy; she’s hidden by what she’s wearing. As she comes into herself, her clothes become more fitted. When she meets Bina, color is introduced into her wardrobe. Like a butterfly, she’s coming out.”
In contrast, Rees described Alike’s butch friend Laura “as a peacock, very bright, very bold.” The filmmaker insisted the main character is nothing like her friend: “Alike is neither of the things she’s changing into — she’s not the stud in the club, or a princess with rhinestones. She’s somewhere in between. The clothes show her becoming herself.”
Likewise, lighting and camerawork are deliberately used to express Alike’s stages of development. Rees revealed, “Alike is a chameleon: She’s painted by the lights around her. In the club, she’s purple; on the bus, she’s green; at home she’s pink; and she is in white light by the end of the film. The size of the shots are very close as she cocooned and claustrophobic, but they open out wider and wider when she’s free. I did a wardrobe bible and showed how she changed.”
Such dedication and research informs the film, and contributes to the power of Alike’s story.
Rees’ approach extends to how Alike is perceived and how she perceives others. The filmmaker explained, “We are showing people responding differently to Alike. Just as she is transformed by the people she meets, she’s transforming them.”
Those who see “Pariah” are likely to be transformed by Alike as well.
Q&A with film’s star
Adepero Oduye makes an indelible impression as Alike in “Pariah.” In this Q&A, the actress, who was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for her performance, spoke about developing Alike.
PGN: You’re playing a teenager in “Pariah.” What were you like as a teenager? AO: Figuring it all out — like most of us were all doing. It got to a point where I knew where my strengths are. I was not used to expressing myself. Everything was kind of kept inside. I slowly discovered things that allowed me to outwardly express myself — so singing, and then a bit of writing/spoken word, then a bit of acting. I did a lot of gospel choir in high school‘Pariah’ goes deepI had a teacher who asked us to write poems. He encouraged us to get up on stage and speak our poetry. It came from me. It was the most personal thing — I could get stuff out that was going on — not feeling beautiful, or not fitting in or odd man out.
PGN: Did you write Alike’s poetry? AO: Dee [Rees, the writer/director] sent me a notebook, and said to start writing as Alike. I wrote a whole bunch of stuff in that book.
PGN: How did you approach what/how Alike reveals herself to people? AO: I relate to that idea of stepping back and observing and checking out the scene — see how people are. Figure that out, and then determine what you can reveal to certain people. I feel that Alike is very much like observing someone/thing and then, based on what she figures out, [decides] that person’s OK.
PGN: You use your expressions — smiles especially — and body language very well to communicate what Alike is feeling. How did you develop that? AO: I don’t know! I just do it. It’s instinctive. You don’t have to do so much, to be in an open, vulnerable state. It’s that things with Alike, the moments, are so heavy and overwhelming. The times I can just smile and be … I just express myself in all situations fully. When I’m excited or happy, or when I’m super-awkward, I just allow myself. I don’t stop myself, I just go.
PGN: Speaking of awkward, what can you say about the scene where you sport a strap-on? AO: As the actor, I didn’t feel awkward about it at all. I should feel weird or embarrassed for walking on set for 8 hours with a strap-on on, but I wasn’t and I think because I wasn’t, when I had to be [embarrassed], I could be. That dichotomy of not being embarrassed at all, and this is a story I’m telling. Teenagers figure it out, and making crazy-ass mistakes is part of it. You have no idea what the heck you’re doing!
— Gary Kramer