Pret­ty Red Dress

When it comes to the annals of visu­al cul­ture, the roots of cross-dress­ing wend all the way back to clas­si­cal stage farce, silent com­e­dy and beyond. Debut writer/​director Dionne Edwards soft­ly tamps down rather than excis­es these for­ma­tive influ­ences with her film Pret­ty Red Dress, a com­pelling and orig­i­nal dra­ma about Black ex-con­vict Travis (Natey Jones) who returns home to his wife and daugh­ter hav­ing devel­oped cer­tain desires he doesn’t yet know how to deal with.

Old muck­ers on the street see Travis’ incar­cer­a­tion as a badge of hon­our, while his slick-willy broth­er uses it as psy­cho­log­i­cal lever­age, opt­ing to help Travis rein­te­grate into soci­ety, but on his own demean­ing terms. Mean­while, Travis’ wife Can­dice (Alexan­dra Burke) is in the process of audi­tion­ing for a role in a Tina Turn­er-themed musi­cal, which requires her to repeat­ed­ly step into the guise of the R&B super­star, which she does with the help of a vin­tage red sequined mini dress.

Latchkey daugh­ter Ken­isha (Temilo­la Olatun­bo­sun) attempts to put a brave face on her sit­u­a­tion, which includes unpick­ing her own sex­u­al­i­ty, and the fact that she spots her dad try­ing on the red dress, replete with thick make-up and baby­doll wig.

Pop star Burke makes a nat­ur­al tran­si­tion from the world of music to film and does well to essay Candice’s con­flict­ed response to her husband’s attempts as naked self-expres­sion. There are occa­sion­al laps­es into soap opera histri­on­ics, and some of Edwards’ dia­logue works too hard to con­trive a big­ger con­flict by undu­ly under­scor­ing Candice’s ignorance.

But for the most part Burke dives into what is a com­plex and not entire­ly sym­pa­thet­ic char­ac­ter. By con­trast, Jones is all coiled inten­si­ty and masked anx­i­ety, as he knows that this thing that gives him the plea­sure of release could poten­tial­ly implode his already-dys­func­tion­al lit­tle fam­i­ly unit.

It’s a film which dis­man­tles and recon­structs the stereo­types of Black mas­culin­i­ty in a man­ner that’s both unsen­ti­men­tal and hon­est. There are no trite assur­ances that peo­ple will accept you for who you are; instead it sug­gests that the onus is on you to forge a new path if you want to make these lifestyle choic­es work.

It’s a bold first effort, but not one with­out its rough edges: the cam­er­a­work and stag­ing is often unnec­es­sar­i­ly showy, with impor­tant dia­logue exchanges muf­fled by a cam­era which spins around the actors. And there’s also a notice­able impulse for over­state­ment, where scenes drag on long past the point where they’ve served their func­tion. Yet there’s some­thing ener­vat­ing about the emo­tions on dis­play, and Edwards is can­ny in the way she imbues a close-quar­ters, kitchen sink dra­ma with moments of bliss­ful hap­pi­ness, humour, eroti­cism and release.

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

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