Buy Medicine for Melancholy

Medicine for Melancholy

We're Sorry...
We're sorry, but this title is currently unavailable.

When new special editions or price reductions are announced.

Synopsis

The day after a one-night-stand, a young man and woman wander the streets of San Francisco attempting to fill in the blanks of the past evening while reflecting on what it means to be black in a city whose cherished ideals of progressive thought and inclusion coexist uneasily with marginalized minority groups and ruthless gentrification in this unsentimental love letter to the City by the Bay.

Review

Mica and Jo' are two 20-somethings coming off a one-night-stand who don't seem to share much in common other than their race in a city not well-known for its African-American population. Mica staunchly self-identifies as a black man, yet is all too aware that his lifestyle is indistinguishable from that of the typical young, white, urban cool-kid. Jo' is completely at home in white upper-middle class culture and doesn't care who has a problem with it. But over the course of a lazy afternoon the two alternately connect and clash in unexpected ways. First-time writer/director Barry Jenkins adroitly recreates the heavy silences and clumsy exchanges of the morning after, and James Laxton's luminous photography allows the city's famous landscapes to shine nonchalantly under gauzy sunlight, perfectly matching the languid atmosphere of a lost day. Medicine is a quietly magical film that expresses the bittersweet disappointment of realizing that a relationship is not to be, and that a place you love isn't quite what you thought it was.

-- Jesse Dubus