I loved Bessie. I’ve been a Queen Latifah fan since I bought my first tape cassette, All Hail the Queen, in 1989 with all the loose change that my Mom permitted me to pocket instead of an allowance. Being a fan of Queen Latifah wasn’t easy as she became a mainstream success in truly awful, but mildly enjoyable films like Bringing Down the House. People either seem to revere her or pigeonhole her into eye roll worthy stereotypes so I’ve had to take a long hiatus. I’ve always preferred her rapping to singing, but at last with Bessie, I feel like Queen Latifah finally got to show rough edges and elegance in equal measure.
Bessie is scandalous in the way that film should be. If sex or violence furthers the story or accurately reflects the character, then I’m all for it in the film, but if it is voyeuristic and brings the film to a screeching halt until the story can resume again, then I hate it. If sex and violence have some emotional resonance with the real world, then it works. Bessie has nudity and depicts sex. The violence is basic, but nothing outlandish: bar fights, stabbing, people hitting and pushing them around. What makes the sex and violence crucial and revolutionary is that it is NOT stylized, but shows a woman both receiving and returning sexual pleasure and violence in her own terms. Bessie was bisexual so some of those sex scenes are lesbian, but they are not pornographic with Vaseline on the lens. These scenes tell us tons about Bessie as a human being and how she survived and became a success. All aspects of her life ignored standard gender, sexual and racial roles.
I’m not a fan of Bessie’s narrative timeline. It starts after one performance at the pinnacle of her success, shows a traumatic flashback, starts at an earlier point in her career with periodic illusions to the flashback, which dissipate long before the opening scene. If I’m being generous, the flashbacks disappear because she has dealt with the source of her trauma head on, but the opening scene suggests that it kept happening after that. I think that storytellers need to be more judicious when veering from a chronological timeline. Please note that I know nothing about Bessie Smith, the actual human being so I can’t rigorously critique the film’s portrayal of the historic figure or elaborate on these narrative choices.
Despite this slight narrative flaw, Bessie works on all levels. It is beautiful. It tells a story that is not well known and almost made me think it was a great superhero story though it was about a real person. The acting is amazing. Bessie features actors that we rarely get to see, and they dominate the entire length of the movie. I would highly recommend Bessie if you can tolerate the sex and violence which I’ve described.