Film Review: Selah And The Spades Seduces With Villainy
I remember being a little girl and watching the FAMOUS telenovela Rubi. It swept through Latin America because it was one of the first, if not, few telenovelas to make its protagonist a female villain: a person, that despite her gender, class, and race/ ethnicity, did whatever the HELL she wanted to get what she wanted and felt no PITY. She was what people called “deliciously evil,” and Amazon Prime’s Selah And The Spades gives off that same intoxicating toxicity; the desire to pour over, judge, and even envy a cast of characters that are horrible people making cruel choices.
Sometimes, I think people love villains because they appear free; unweighted by morals that ask us to care for people who, probably, don’t care, think, or even know us. Most of us, try and should raise the bar on our virtues, but, when it comes to a good, entertaining film, we love to see a character that could care less if a “moral bar” is in the building. With this in mind, your eyes will pour over Lovie Simone’s portrayal of Selah; a young woman in an affluent school whose taste for power is fueled by her graceful ability to make mean people get meaner to appease her.
Selah and The Spades – Official Trailer | Prime Video
Written and directed by Tayarisha Poe, the film feels like if the visual stunning of Midsommar was transferred into a Philadelphia elite school, where Jordan Peele decided to make an “Us” version of Gossip Girl. I can’t reiterate enough that you don’t like these characters and feel a little horrified by them. While Celeste O’Connor’s Paloma can provide a “moral breathe,” she, too, gets lost with her dough-eyed fascination for Selah and The Spades’ world and the “Game of Thrones” dynamics between differing, popular factions within the school. Worse, you kind of want her, too. This is a film that feels as vividly psychological with its audience as it does its characters.
Poe’s writing and cinematography is gorgeous and coolly devouring over youthfulness; salacious need to be seen, heard, exposed, and dominant. Of course, such desires are human, but, being young today, in a world of pandemics and social media, makes this desire heightened and even carnivorous. Hence, I have to thank Poe for hiring actors that LOOK like teenagers, but can act like a bunch of seasoned Meryl Streeps when those camera lights turn on. This allows characters like, Ana Mulvoy Ten’s Bobby, Jharrel Jerome’s Maxxie, Francesca Noel’s Amber B, Evan Roe’s Tom, and Henry Hunter Hall’s Tarit to bite and chew into the eased darkness of their characters. They are not young innocents, but smart, adept, and wickedly clever beings too attracted to control, if that is possible.
Selah And The Spades – First Look Clip | Prime Video
Selah And The Spades is a seedy, dreamy look into the sins of youth, and has a level of melodrama that will enamor audiences, while also making them pray young people do not do and do not have to go throw such things. Yet, no matter what, Tayarisha Poe’s direction and script touches on a very powerful point; absolute power doesn’t corrupt a person because it takes an already corrupt person to get absolute power. Selah And The Spades Comes Out On Amazon And Digital On April 17.
