Barry Jenkins’s romance is moving, beautifully acted and sometimes too slow. Its attention to a young Black couple and their families makes the injustice personal, though the narration can labour what the faces already tell us.
Barry Jenkins gives the young lovers in If Beale Street Could Talk time to look at each other, and expects us to look properly too. His adaptation of James Baldwin’s novel is deeply affecting, though its patient pace sometimes becomes a problem. The aim is to make us understand what this couple have together before asking us to reckon with the racism that keeps them apart. A romance can become dutiful when every moment must prove how important love is; this one mostly avoids that through its actors.
Tish Rivers (KiKi Layne) and Alonzo “Fonny” Hunt (Stephan James) are a young Black couple in 1970s Harlem, separated by his false arrest. KiKi Layne gives the devotion a steadiness that makes it easy to believe in, even when the film’s treatment of the relationship becomes idealised. Stephan James is equally persuasive in the quiet exchanges, where both actors suggest the comfort of knowing someone well. The more formal dialogue does not always sound like speech these two would use with each other.
James Laxton photographs faces with a patience that pays off, giving us time to study an expression before moving on. The brown-and-gold colours and soft focus draw us towards the actors, while their direct gazes make the attention feel returned. We were moved by the lovers looking straight towards the camera. The length of those looks matters: we can see how much they want each other, without a speech explaining it.
Mark Friedberg’s production design is restrained enough to let those faces hold our attention, even within the film’s carefully coordinated colour. The period setting has a polish that occasionally makes the hardship look a little too comfortable. Regina King, as Sharon Rivers, helps keep the family scenes from becoming too sweet. Her performance has a firmness that makes affection feel useful, something that can sustain people through the next difficult conversation.
Joi McMillon and Nat Sanders cut between different periods of the relationship, so that the separation repeatedly interrupts our growing sense of the couple together. That works, although the movement through time does not always change the emotional pace. Nicholas Britell’s score gives the romance room to swell and allows unease to remain audible beneath it. We liked its generosity, but there are stretches when image, music and performance all linger on a feeling we have already understood.
The weaker passages come when Barry Jenkins’s screenplay keeps explaining what his images have made clear. The narration can compete with the faces, and some dialogue sounds more composed than spoken. Compared with a romance built around quarrels and reconciliations, this is unusually committed to making tenderness interesting in itself. That is a worthwhile choice, but the tempo needs more variation; at 120 minutes, the film sometimes asks us to remain moved simply because it has not finished being solemn.
The family performances give the story much of its warmth, extending our concern beyond the central couple. Its account of racism never requires these people to exist only as victims, and their affection is convincing enough to make the interruptions hurt. Give it an uninterrupted evening, and some patience when it takes longer than it needs.
