robinsonfeatures Micah and Jo meet at a party, get drunk, have sex and wake up the following morning with hangovers. She is more than willing to let it end there, to the point of lying about her real name and running away, but Micah has other ideas. After discovering her name and address he tracks her down to the apartment she shares with her white curator boyfriend who is away working in London. Jo reluctantly lets him in and he proceeds to question her about who pays her rent, whether her boyfriend is white, why there are no pictures on the wall as well as questioning her blackness. Although he comes across as somewhat annoying, for the purposes of the plot we are led to believe that Jo is so charmed by his behaviour that she agrees to spend the day with him. Micah spends the time continuing to criticise Jo's awareness of black culture, complaining about the gentrification of the city which parallels the gentrification of black people, questioning Jo's lack of employment and finally berating her for not being involved with a person of colour.For all his blackness Micah is ignorant about why Black History Month is in February. For all his complaints about gentrification he is not part of the campaign to halt it. He complains about Jo's boyfriend being white but it is clear from his MySpace page that his former girlfriend was white. Micah is not impressed with Jo spending her time printing teeshirts to sell but his job cleaning out fish tanks is hardly anything to brag about and his final rant that she should be going out black or Latino men doesn't carry much weight as he doesn't appear to have any black or Latino friends. Heck the party where they meet is thrown by a wealthy white guy who he is clearly friends with. Although Jo seems to be relatively intelligent and confident, she fails to stand up to many of the criticisms levelled at her, or call Micah out on his obvious hypocrisy. So we are left wondering why it is Jo gives Micah such an easy ride. Is it because she shares Micah's rather narrow view of the world? Or that she simply sees no point in making unnecessary waves when their association is just a one day distraction from her real life. How much more satisfying would it have been for her to turn the tables on Micah and get him to open up about his real reason for pursuing her so hard and why he had such a problem with her boyfriend being white. Was it that he'd had his heart broken by a white woman and felt things would be easier with a black partner? Or was he looking to exact some kind of revenge?I stumbled across this film pretty recently. It was categorised as part of the mumblecore genre presumably because it had an obviously small budget and featured then unknown actors and playing characters of a certain age who spend most of the film simply talking to one another. Where it differs from the usual mumblecore offering is that the characters are black and that race along with gentrification are big themes. It's interesting to read the glowing reviews about this film and while part of me agrees with the poster who suggested they were written by people involved in the production, I think it's more likely to be dow to a willingness to overlook the film's obvious flaws because there are sadly so few films featuring hipster black people happily listening to indie music and part of the indie scene.

mbmiller-o It was lucky that I had a computer nearby so that I could read email while watching this movie. There is a kind of quirky genius to it and I did feel an intimate connection to the characters at times. It felt real and familiar, a little bit awkward to be seeing them so close and personal. In a way the extreme realness of the film was its downfall. Hitchcock once said something to the effect that films are like real life with the boring parts taken out. Too many of the boring parts were left in this film.The cinematography is weak, but the use of muted colors matches the plodding dullness of the film, which may have been the intention. The music was a strong point, I thought -- it was different and original, fresh and creative.

jamesdamnbrown.com/movies You couldn't make a movie that looks more like my day to day life in San Francisco than this. Telling the story of two black twenty-somethings who meet and have a one night stand, they start off the morning after in Bernal Heights, walk over to Noe Valley for breakfast, hop a cab to the Marina to drop her off, then he heads back to his studio on Geary at Hyde, two blocks from where I once rented a nearly identical apartment, down to the rotating walk-in closet door that once sported a Murphy bed. The couple meet again and head to the Museum of the African Diaspora on Mission and then over to Yerba Buena Gardens to ride the merry-go-round, both a block away from where I work. Later that night they buy stuff for dinner at Rainbow Grocery then head down to the Knockout to dance while my pal DJ Paul Paul spins 45s although his oldies singles are overdubbed on the film's soundtrack with obscure but cool indie rock. But aside from the pleasure of seeing all my usual haunts captured on on film, or digital video rather, Medicine For Melancholy is a smart movie that captures not only the vibe of life in downtown San Francisco, but also the subtleties of the changing ethnic and economic demographics of the second most expensive city in the country. The guy—played by Wyatt Cenac, an occasional correspondent on John Stewart's Daily Show—has a deadpan quarrelsomeness that is occasionally hilarious, because not only is he concerned about the ongoing disenfranchisement of the black community in the city, he's also bugged about the pending disenfranchisement of himself from the girl's pants once her live-in boyfriend returns to town. Her boyfriend, by the way, is white, which Cenac's character tries to elevate to a political issue because of his looming romantic frustration, but she's not having it, which leads to one of the film's best exchanges as they argue about the role race plays in forming their sense of self-identity. Lots of clever relationship stuff, like surreptitiously scoping out each other's MySpace profiles and sharp naturalistic dialogue as they continually negotiate and renegotiate the emotional boundaries and ending point of their one day affair. And maybe the scene with the housing activists meeting was a digression, but you know what, if you live here that stuff is very important and on everybody's mind, and it fits nicely given the context of the film whether you like it or not. Highly recommended.

jamespark Just saw the premiere at SXSW. An absolutely beautiful movie. I love the look of the film. The way it's shot changes over time as the story unfolds subtly reinforcing events on screen. The actors work so very wonderfully together. The protagonists are able to connect via a shared circumstance not easily communicated to others. The feelings and thoughts of both over the 24 hours of this film's settings really came through and affected me greatly. Kudos to the whole team. They were able to make a professional-looking film with a skeleton crew and a nearly nonexistent budget which any auteur would be proud of. I can't wait to be able to see this movie again, next time in SF.