Queen & Slim slipped through the theaters earlier this month. If you missed it there, keep an eye out for it on the streaming or premium services in the coming months. In the 1920s, Theodore Dreiser took over 800 pages to paint a portrait of the dark side of the Roaring Twenties in “An American Tragedy.” With Queen & Slim, first-time feature director Melina Matsoukas, working from a script by Lena Waithe, creates the New American Tragedy in 132 searing minutes.
The story begins in Cleveland with a first date arranged over Tinder between “Queen” (Jodie Turner-Smith) and “Slim” (Daniel Kaluuya). She’s a lawyer who suffered a hard loss earlier that day – a capital case that ends in a death penalty – and doesn’t want to be alone. He works in a grocery store, though the center of his world is his church. When he asks why she chose to go out with him, she says it was because, in his Tinder picture, he looked sad, eliciting a quiet “Damn” from him. As he drives her home from the date, it’s clear this will be the only time these two people get together.
But then fate steps in. A momentary crossing of a line on the street brings about a traffic stop with an aggressive cop who pushes the moment to a confrontation. “Queen” identifies herself as a lawyer, but that makes no difference to the cop. When she announces she’s getting her cell phone out of her purse to film the incident, the cop shoots her and then turns the gun towards “Slim.” He struggles with the officer, and eventually shoots the cop, killing him. While he wants to call the police and explain what happened, with her practical experience of the law she understands that they are as good as dead. Their only choice is to flee.
Waithe crafts a story that twists and turns like a mountainous country road, with plenty of ups and downs. Even as they become the focus of a national manhunt, they find surprising moments of grace in the midst of the adrenalin-fueled flight. “Slim” is haunted by what happened, wondering if he was fated to die that night (we later learn the cop had killed a black motorist in a similar event the year before). “Queen” is at first angry with “Slim” for his doubts, but slowly the two bond as their fates entwine. I’ve put the characters in quotation marks because Waithe makes the two into mythic Every Persons by never using either those title names or their real names, except when they’re listening to news reports.
Kaluuya is a proven actor with his performance in Get Out plus his supporting roles in Black Panther and Widows, and he makes “Slim” completely relatable. “Queen” is Turner-Smtih’s first starring film role after mostly appearing on TV, and she is mesmerizing in the role. The film also boasts many sharp, small supporting roles. Two stand out in partidular: Bokeem Woodbine as Uncle Earl whom “Queen” helped in the past, and Chloe Sevigny and Flea (bassist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers) as allies who shelter the fleeing couple.
Matsoukas has been a prime director in the music video genre for a dozen years, working with Beyonce, Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Ne-Yo, and others. She’d met Waithe while directing her on her self-written episode of “Master of None” (which won Waithe an Emmy for outstanding comedy writing). When she learned about the screenplay Waithe had written. Matsoukas determined it would be her feature film debut.
Greek tragedy always turned on a fatal flaw in the character. Here, though, the flaw is within society, with two justice systems based on the color of a person’s skin. The litany of names who have wound up dead after interactions with police, that would never have been fatal if their skin had been a different color, is long and sad. In one memorable final shot, “Queen” and “Slim” pass from people to symbols. Sadly, we know they won’t be the last such symbols.
omnivorous cinephile 