The Forty-Year-Old Version

Radha is turning forty. She was once on a list of promising playwrights under thirty and then nothing happened. She now teaches drama at a high school in Harlem and is looking for a producer to stage the play she has written. The producer she finds wants it, on condition that it be made into something a white audience will understand. Meanwhile Radha starts rapping. Radha Blank wrote it, directed it and takes the lead. It is shot largely in black and white. The narrative rests on the director's own life; Blank really is a playwright and really does rap. The subject is who grants permission in making art. Radha's play has to pass a producer's approval and each approval changes the text; the narrative delivers this through comedy rather than anger. It won the directing award at the Sundance film festival in 2020 and was released on Netflix. The rap passages are set inside the narrative; the lyrics say what the character cannot. Its limit is length; it runs close to two hours and repeats itself in the middle. Who it is for: viewers who like American independent comedy and satire of the art world. Who it is not for: the pacing is irregular, the dialogue is dense, and the references to the New York theatre world are closed to an outside viewer.