Murtada Elfadl reporting from Sundance..
Beauty pageant films are a genre into themselves used to tell many different stories. As when a filmmaker wants to tell a heartwarming story about female ambition (Miss Firecracker) or a satire about striving for perfection (Drop Dead Gorgeous). Sometimes they even debut at Sundance (Little Miss Sunshine). The latest in this tradition is Writer/Director Channing Godfrey Peoples’ Miss Juneteenth which focuses on mother-daughter beauty pageant contestants. However i don't think we've seen one as Black or as enmenshed in specific traditions as this one.
Nicole Beharie (Shame, 42, and TV's Sleepy Hollow) stars as Turquoise Joines. She was once Miss Juneteenth, a title commemorating the day slaves in Texas were freed, two years after the Emancipation Proclamation. As every character in the film keeps telling her constantly -- how rude -- she has not lived up to the promise of her teen years...
Turquoise works as a waitress and barmaid while grooming her 15 year old daughter Kai (Alexis Chikaeze) to try for the title and the coveted scholarship that comes with it.
Peoples’ film has a slow meditative tempo as it shows us Turquoise’s life and the people in it. She picks up additional work as a makeup artist in a funeral home run by a man (Akron Watson) smitten with her, tangles with her on again off again boyfriend and Kai’s father (Kendrick Sampson) and deals with her alcoholic church minister mother (Lori Hayes) who’s always judging her choices and trying to get her saved by Jesus.
Beharie commands the screen with a naturally quiet disposition and the film flows to her rhythm. Sometimes slowing down completely as Turquoise halts to take on another day and challenge and Beharie shows us that with small reticent gestures. It’s the kind of performance - and film - that you need to let seep into you, settle in and wash away leaving you nourished with palpable emotions.
By focusing the film on the inter-generational conflict between mothers and daughters Peoples’ wrings wonderful affecting sentiments that are hard not to feel. We’ve all had those conflicts with our parents and/or children. She also has a feel for the Texan pulse of life in Fort Worth and the scenes in Turquoise’s bar or at her mother’s church feel authentic. Her affection and knowledge of the pageant world is so credible that we get to understand why it’s so dear to Turquoise and why she wants her daughter to win it badly. Ultimately though Peoples’ guides both characters into finding what drives them and works for them regardless of what they want from the other. And when we get there, there’s catharsis.