Lovers Rock – first look review

There is absolute­ly no doubt that Steve McQueen is one of the finest British film­mak­ers we’ve ever had: from his haunt­ing Bob­by Sands biopic Hunger to 2018’s mas­ter­ful heist thriller Wid­ows, it would seem there is no lim­it to his sto­ry­telling capa­bil­i­ties. And, while 2020 hasn’t giv­en us much to cel­e­brate, there’’ cer­tain­ly been a lot of won­der­ful work by McQueen.

His ambi­tious Year 3 project – cap­tur­ing por­traits of every third year class in Lon­don – was dis­played at tube sta­tions across the cap­i­tal and the Tate Britain until Jan­u­ary 2021, and the artist received a long-over­due ret­ro­spec­tive at the Tate Mod­ern. Now comes Small Axe, a series of five fea­ture-length films, com­mis­sioned by the BBC, shin­ing a light on the untold sto­ries of Black peo­ple with­in the Unit­ed King­dom from the 1960s to the 1980s.

Two of the films (Lovers Rock and Man­grove) were cho­sen for Cannes’ Offi­cial Selec­tion, mak­ing McQueen the first film­mak­er to have two titles in com­pe­ti­tion, and they play at New York Film Fes­ti­val along­side Red, White and Blue. Lovers Rock and Man­grove will also show at the Lon­don Film Fes­ti­val next month, while the entire anthol­o­gy will air lat­er in the year on BBC in the UK and Ama­zon Prime in North Amer­i­ca. This rep­re­sents a mam­moth under­tak­ing for McQueen, who has been work­ing on the project for years – and with Lovers Rock open­ing NYFF this week, it’s a sign that we should be extreme­ly excit­ed about what’s to come.

Set over the course of one night at a house par­ty in West Lon­don, Martha (Ama­rah-Jae St Aubyn in her debut role) and Franklyn (BAF­TA 2020 ris­ing star Michael Ward) meet by chance, and their imme­di­ate attrac­tion to each oth­er caus­es fric­tion among oth­er par­ty­go­ers. Amid the puls­ing music which plays from a sound sys­tem set up in the liv­ing room, ten­sions flare between guests – Martha fights with her friend Pat­ty (Shani­qua Okwok) and local sleaze­ball Bam­my (Daniel Fran­cis-Swa­by) prowls around look­ing for a girl to charm. It’s a sce­nario that’s famil­iar to most of us, though per­haps takes on a new sort of poignan­cy in the age of social dis­tanc­ing. Bod­ies sway togeth­er in an amber glow, the low hum of con­ver­sa­tion per­me­ates through­out the two-sto­ry house.

But the par­ty feels like a safe haven from the out­side world – ear­ly in the film, two white boys watch on indif­fer­ent­ly as two Black men strug­gle to car­ry a sofa, not both­er­ing to offer a hand. Lat­er, when Martha runs into the street to catch up with an irri­tat­ed Pat­ty, a group of white men see her, and start to make lewd com­ments. They only leave her alone once Franklyn appears behind her. McQueen demon­strates not only the racism that Black peo­ple face in Lon­don, but the misog­y­ny that Black women are sub­ject to, even with­in the sup­posed fun and friv­o­li­ty of a birth­day party.

One of McQueen’s great gifts as a film­mak­er and artist is how ten­der his work is. He has a true knack for cre­at­ing inti­ma­cy between actor and audi­ence, com­pelling us to care whether it’s Michael Fass­ben­der in Shame or Vio­la Davis in Wid­ows. It’s no dif­fer­ent here; we root for Martha and Franklyn from the sec­ond we meet them, as prick­ly as their intro­duc­tion starts. But Lovers Rock’s finest moment fea­tures the rev­ellers singing an a capel­la ren­di­tion of Janet Kay’s ​‘Sil­ly Games’ – a hyp­not­ic, joy­ful scene which speaks to how music brings peo­ple togeth­er and chas­es their prob­lems away, even if just for one mag­i­cal night.