“Black Girl”, “Sex Education”, “Still Up” and “The Kings of Bombay”

THE MORNING LIST

Big pieces on the menu this week, with the latest season of Sex Educationan astonishing Indian thriller (The Kings of Bombay) and a great success in this new genre that is “black horror” (Black girl). British comedy Still Up adds a touch of romanticism to this explosive selection.

“Black Girl”: the perils of the publishing jungle

“This is Get Out shit »ends up conceding one of the characters of Black girl in one of the last episodes of this promising first season. It’s true, the series created by novelist Zakiya Dalila Harris and actress and screenwriter Rashida Jones serve each other, as did Jordan Peele in his first feature filmthe grammar of horror cinema to showcase the efforts of an African-American character who is looking for his place. Black girl is also an office comedy set in the world of New York publishing and a morality tale about the virtues and dangers of ambition.

An overqualified istant at Wagner Books, a prestigious progressive house, Nella Rogers (Sinclair Daniel) is also the only black employee there. Delighted by the arrival of Hazel-May McCall (Ashleigh Murray), African-American and istant, just like her (the original title, The Other Black Girl, translates as “the other black girl”), Nella is quickly confronted with the ambiguity of the behavior of her colleague and, above all, rival. The daily worries (an author, pillar of the house, who submits a frankly racist manuscript; the distrust of the new stars of digital media with regard to Wagner) take on a sinister reflection when the memory of the first book written by an African-American for Wagner: its publication was followed by the disappearance of the only black editor in the history of the publisher.

Creators spend a lot of energy choreographing comedy and horror. The result is sometimes acrobatic, never clumsy. The staging discoveries – a sequence in a Lynchian karaoke, the metamorphosis of an open space into an infernal labyrinth – offer a welcoming space for social and political satire. In a high-level cast, the comic verve of Brittany Adebumola stands out, a new version of the best friend who doesn’t keep her tongue in her pocket. T.S.

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