Sunday morning in San Francisco: two people wake up together in a bedroom. We find out that they just had a drunken one night stand in someone else's apartment—a party was involved—without knowing who's who. A nervous introduction and a very awkward breakfast later, they part ways. But Micah (Wyatt Cenac), the guy, feels compelled to get Jo (Tracey Heggins), the girl, to like him. He tracks her down, convinces her of his charming earnestness, and off they go to spend a day together in the city, discovering that there's romance behind the one-night-stand after all.
Movies with this date-out-on-the-city premise tend to grate because they rely on the prerequisite that we relate to the characters and enjoy what they enjoy. We're supposed to bloom in the heart when they discuss the bands we'd like to discover, or old crap from the 80's we ironically love, or visit architectures we pretend to be interested in. As such, the appeal is either limited or very carefully gentrified; not too whitewashed to lose that counterculture edge, but still obviously very safe for middle-class consumption.
Medicine for Melancholy subverts that, seemingly as easy as making its characters black. While simply switching the skin color of your characters doesn't make a story more original or relevant, in this case it kind of does because the film brings that exact point to the forefront. Instead of retooling the cultural tone to fit the accepted image of its characters—in other words, make it "more black"—it keeps the ones it wants and confronts how certain cultural trait are ascribed to a specific ethnic group. This is like the indirect response to all those superficial "white people are so, black people are so" jokes that third-rate black comics are so fond of.
We get the sense that something's bubbling in Micah when Jo asks him if she can call him Mike and he says no. "It's not the same." Maybe he just doesn't like the name Mike, or maybe it's the first sign of a guy who's terrified of losing his identity. "Everything about being indie is completely tied to being not black," Micah later rants, angry at the alienation he experiences as someone who clings to black pride but knows how distant he is from the culture he defends. It sounds contradictory, but he's challenging the contradiction itself: why can't the hipster persona he's comfortable with reconcile with the radical idealism he believes in?
At one point, Micah declares that the one word that describes him is "black," insisting that his skin color comes before his occupation or gender; partly because that's how society sees him. Jo, on the other hand, is the middle-classer who believes that such kneejerk ethnic pride doesn't belong in progressive youths; but of course she's never had a reason to question her painless assimilation to the greater San Francisco liberal melting pot.
On the surface, it's a fascinating and very much true depiction of the artistic twenty-something San Franciscans who struggle with the idea that they've been letting others define who they are. Medicine for Melancholy floats in the same water as other indie-hipster-mumblecore young-hearts-in-love movies, but this is a politically-centered and self-aware movie that has something else driving its characters other than their feelings, setting it apart from being just a Mark Duplass movie with black characters (and not just because this one is very well-photographed).
Jo in a relationship with someone else, a white man. This not only arises a conflict between her and Micah, bringing up how interracial lovers play into their social structure, but it also serves as a representation of a class struggle. If you're from here, you'd notice what they're standing in for immediately: Micah is a native living in a Tenderloin apartment, while Jo is a transplant living in a house in Cow Hollow that's not hers. It's one of those metaphors that's both obvious yet understated—made transparent only when Micah and Jo eavesdrop on a discussion of San Francisco's gentrified real estate game and how it's made the dividing line between the rich and the poor as glaringly obvious as lines on a map.
DVD Bonus Features
Maybe because it's a low-budget independent production, there's no documented production process or much release-related fanfare. Aside from a trailer, the only feature on the disc is an audio recording of writer/director Barry Jenkins being interviewed at the London Film Festival. Listening to an audio recording on a DVD player isn't really that fun. I was wishing for a podcast link instead.
What's somewhat surprising, though, is the lack of a director's commentary track, which has become a standard nowadays. Makes you wonder if the first-timer Barry Jenkins didn't want to do it, or if IFC decided to just release the film bare even after all the critical praises. Usually when a new release skimps, it's hard to justify a purchase, but this one is very much worth getting just for the movie alone.
"Medicine for Melancholy" is on sale November 2, 2009 and is rated NR. Drama, Romance. Written and directed by Barry Jenkins. Starring Tracey Heggins, Wyatt Cenac.
