5 paths hbos ‘Bessie’ is completely queerconian

With the kind permission of HBO

TK image signature

Like a perfectly time -controlled high note in a torch song, Better Not on tiptoe in queerness when the filmmaker Dee Rees gives us a love letter to black, bisexual brilliance. If the story forgets our strange ancestors, we have to remind the world that they sing, love and live loudly.

Grab your feather Boa, pour something essential and let us sashay through the five ways Better is queerconically as always.

It struts with bisexual visibility

HBO

Tika Sumpter as Lucille, Queen Latifah as Bessie Smith

From the moment that Queen Latifah’s Besse Smith with Lucille (Tika Sumpter) is in bed under the glow of the day, we are said – no – that the “Empress of the Blues” was loved loudly about the gender spectrum. Director Dee Rees folds several character of Smith’s real friends in Lucilles to keep the focus tight, but the point is crystal clear: the wish of this woman was not a footnote. Latifah himself doubled authenticity and swiveled pearl couplings that were annoyed by the authentic representation of the bisexual intimacy of the film.

The film meets a queer sisterhood in the blues story

HBO

Mo’nique as Ma Rainey

Enter Mo’niques Ma Rainey with all your gilded boast and gravitational education. Instead of reducing the big mother of the blues to a cameo, Better Let us flirt rainey mentor, mother-hen and almost over the screen. It is a memory that black queer women have continuously innovated the cutlure that they later minimized if they are not completely deleted. Rainey takes Smith under her wings and teaches her everything, from negotiating her wages to start her theater presence, although friendship gradually deteriorates.

Dee Rees’ strange black look is the secret line of trumpet line of the film

Cindy Ord/Getty Images for HBO

Director Dee Rees visits on April 30, 2015 in New York City on the HBO Bessie 81 tour at Stephan Weiss Studio.

Behind the camera, rees-a black lesbian filmmaker render from the 1920s, a pension party decadence with the intimacy of a whisper and the bravery of a brass band. Their lens lies on the tensions between the nightclub euphoria and southern violence and honored how black queer artists have cut glittering sanctuaries in hostile terrain. This specificity helped the film to achieve several prizes, from the victories at the Primetime Emmys and Critics’ choice to Glaad Media Awards. It was proof that the representation takes place the truth of the community.

It shows the roaring, slippery strange Juke-Joint scene

HBO

Queen Latifah as Bessie Smith

Better Do not disinfect the nightlife of the prohibition period. It bathes the scene in sweat, gin and coded blues texts, which once telegraded the strange desire to those. The film makes the queerness less like a protocol of action and more like the pulse of the era.

Hardware and streaming lists of the award ceremony have set the inheritance

Frank Masi/HBO

Queen Latifah as Bessie Smith, Tika Sumpter as Lucille

By skipping the typical “coming out” sheet and concentrating on a woman who already has her sexuality, he expanded the possibilities of queer stories. No wonder that it remains a “must” on LGBTQ+ lists: the action is not about shame or revelation, but about talent, hectic pace and bedroom freedom.

In other words, it is strange, black and wonderfully complicated. Bessie would be damn proud.

Frank Masi/HBO

Queen Latifah as Bessie Smith

Sometimes the most radical act does not burst out of the closet. It steps back in a velvet dressing dress, illuminates a cigarette and dares to keep up with its pace. Better is a strange film that corresponds to our truth.