Pariah

Alike is seventeen, lives in Brooklyn and dresses as herself at school; on the bus home she changes clothes. Her mother buys her blouses and wants her sitting in church. Her father asks nothing. Alike is a lesbian and her family behaves as though it does not know; the real question is whether it will be said. The subject is not discovering an identity but the girl already knowing hers. Alike knows what she is; what she has to learn is how to live. That distinction separates the film from the genre's habits: it is not a story of discovery but of decision. The form is warm and coloured. Bradford Young's cinematography fills the night scenes with purple and blue and shows unusual care for the time in lighting Black skin; the film's visual reputation largely rests on it. It is Dee Rees's first feature, expanded from a short she had made earlier. It screened at Sundance and won the cinematography award there. Rees based the screenplay on her own experience. Adepero Oduye plays Alike and Kim Wayans her mother, whose performance carries the film's harshest passages. Who it is for: viewers who like independent drama about conflict inside a family. Who it is not for: anyone expecting reconciliation; the film ends without resolving it.