Alma’s Rain­bow review – a styl­ish gem

One of the first fea­ture length nar­ra­tive dra­mas writ­ten, direct­ed and pro­duced by a Black Amer­i­can woman in the 20^th cen­tu­ry is Ayoka Chenzira’s debut, Alma’s Rain­bow. It’s a vibrant ​’90s time cap­sule cen­tred on a teenage girl who is dis­cov­er­ing her­self while Strict Mom and Cool Aunt seem to be butting heads in the back­ground. There’s a lot of depth here too, beyond what the premise sug­gests. The film didn’t receive a wide enough release at the time, as dis­trib­u­tors in the ​’90s only seemed inter­est­ed in telling cer­tain types of Black sto­ries. Despite inde­pen­dent cin­e­ma hav­ing a moment too, plen­ty of gems (includ­ing this one) end­ed up falling through the cracks.

Rain­bow Gold (Vic­to­ria Gabrielle Platt) is the teenage girl at the heart of the film, who can’t under­stand why she has to either com­mit to the tomboy­ish garb she’s in when per­form­ing in a hip-hop dance crew, or con­form to a more fem­i­nine look. Her moth­er Alma (Kim West­on-Moran) runs a beau­ty par­lour out of their stun­ning Brook­lyn town­house, a nat­ur­al space of com­mu­ni­ty for oth­er women of colour in the neigh­bour­hood. Alarmed by her daughter’s bud­ding sex­u­al­i­ty, Alma keeps remind­ing her to ​“stay away from boys”. But when Alma’s flam­boy­ant sis­ter Ruby (Mizan Kir­by) turns up after a 10 year long absence try­ing to make it in Paris as an actress, the two end up clash­ing over what direc­tion they think Rainbow’s life should take. 

Fas­ci­nat­ed with her aunt’s larg­er-than-life spir­it, Rain­bow begins dream­ing about life as a per­former, even as her dance crew is falling apart due to her male part­ners becom­ing more inter­est­ed in chas­ing after girls than in rehears­ing. Chen­zi­ra focus­es her ener­gy on putting this matri­ar­chal tri­fec­ta of con­flict­ing per­son­al­i­ties front and cen­tre. Rain­bow, Alma and Ruby are inti­mate­ly fleshed out and make a com­pelling core to this extreme­ly styl­ish pic­ture. By the end of the film, all three women’s jour­neys are influ­enced by their rela­tion­ships with one anoth­er, attest­ing to Chenzira’s abil­i­ty to explore the com­plex­i­ties Black wom­an­hood in a way that’s charm­ing, sub­tle but bold all the same.

Sure, the film is rough around the edges – some of the writ­ing feels uneven, some per­for­mances feel much bet­ter suit­ed to the stage and there are some dis­tract­ing ADR issues. But if we look past the obvi­ous lim­i­ta­tions of a shoe­string bud­get, we find a gift: a love­ly, tac­tile film with such a nuanced depic­tion of the ever-shift­ing tides of mother/​daughter dynam­ics, over­flow­ing with love and care as much as it is with a vibrant colour palette and gor­geous textures.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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