Luce | Little White Lies

Luce

05 Nov 2019 / Released: 08 Nov 2019

Words by Glenn Heath Jr

Directed by Julius Onah

Starring Kelvin Harrison Jr, Naomi Watts, and Tim Roth

Three people sitting on chairs in a room - a man in a suit, a man in a blue jacket, and a woman in a dark outfit.
Three people sitting on chairs in a room - a man in a suit, a man in a blue jacket, and a woman in a dark outfit.
2

Anticipation.

“From the director of The Cloverfield Paradox”

3

Enjoyment.

This morally ambiguous character study definitely leaves a mark.

3

In Retrospect.

A blunt but effectively forceful Obama-era requiem.

Race and priv­i­lege come under the micro­scope in direc­tor Julius Onah’s thought-pro­vok­ing drama.

Track star, debate cham­pi­on, hon­ours stu­dent: Luce Edgar (Kelvin Har­ri­son Jr) can seem­ing­ly do no wrong in the eyes of gush­ing high school admin­is­tra­tors and his wealthy adop­tive par­ents, Peter (Tim Roth) and Amy (Nao­mi Watts).

The aca­d­e­m­ic lau­rels and sport­ing accom­plish­ments are made all the more impres­sive con­sid­er­ing Luce’s trau­mat­ic past grow­ing up in war-torn Eritrea as a child sol­dier. Most of the ador­ing faces gaz­ing at Luce are white. To them, this hand­some, smart young black man is the Amer­i­can Dream per­son­i­fied. But more impor­tant­ly, he’s a liv­ing val­i­da­tion of their lib­er­al con­vic­tions about social jus­tice and racial equality.

Julius Onah’s Luce, a strik­ing­ly blunt Oba­ma-era requiem, con­fronts the self-serv­ing under­bel­ly of white priv­i­lege and minor­i­ty tokenism by com­pli­cat­ing Luce’s seem­ing­ly unim­peach­able per­sona. Iron­i­cal­ly, the first shot across the bow comes from a whip-smart teacher of colour named Har­ri­et Wil­son (Octavia Spencer), who takes an aggres­sive and eth­i­cal­ly prob­lem­at­ic approach to con­fronting Luce’s poten­tial dark side.

Adapt­ed from JC Lee’s stage play of the same name, Onah’s dra­ma grows increas­ing­ly labo­ri­ous as it rev­els in the plot mechan­ics of revenge and betray­al. The best scenes apply pres­sures of uncer­tain­ty to social inter­ac­tions har­bour­ing an organ­ic con­nec­tion to racial bias, gen­der dis­crim­i­na­tion and school vio­lence. But those moments become few and far between as Luce’s manip­u­lat­ing mind games become more overt.

Still, Luce remains a con­vinc­ing and con­fi­dant exam­ple of sus­tained men­ace. The ver­sion of Amer­i­can ide­al­ism it skew­ers is one based on denial. When Peter tells Amy that everything’s fine” after both have near­ly reached rock bot­tom, it’s hard not to chuck­le, and see the ulti­mate point of Luce’s fun­ny games.

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