Film Review - If Beale Street Could Talk (2019)

If Beale Street Could Talk is the new film by Barry Jenkins who made Moonlight back in 2016 and concerns Tish (KiKi Layne) and Fonnie (Stephan James) two young people who are settling down together until Fonnie ends up in prison accused of rape in the meantime Tish is pregnant with his child and the desperate race is on to prove his innocence.

Beale Street shows tremendous growth for Mr Jenkins as a filmmaker since Moonlight and while he also shows the same soulful intimacy with the camera he showed in that film he proves himself very adept at telling more of a conventional story as opposed to a vignette one that Moonlight was and I really liked that about this movie especially its love story which is very tender to watch and Ms Layne and Mr James have terrific chemistry together.

I also really liked the performance by Regina King who deserved her Academy Award win playing a desperate mother trying to everything in her power to keep her growing family together and prove her son in law’s innocence.

But alas for all of this good work and I personally think Beale Street is a better movie than Moonlight mainly because of its more conventional 3 act storytelling I feel that this movie doesn’t grab you in that same way that Moonlight did and in that film you really felt like you were following this character in Chiron through these different stages of his life and the film is structured in that vignette way and it worked very well in centring the overall film on him whereas here while I liked the more conventional love story it did feel that way at times and towards the end it starts to get very predictable in how it will all play out.

And so that was If Beale Street Could Talk and it’s a good movie that is very well made and performed but I also feel that it lacks that certain spice that made Moonlight so memorable, 3 out of 5.