Dionne Edwards’ feature film debut is powerful, effective cinema, warm and compassionate without straying into the sentimental.
★★★★✰
From John Waters to Pedro Almodóvar to Céline Sciamma, fluid expressions of gender have long interested filmmakers across the globe, cinematically liberating the voices of many whilst transcending genre and defying social convention. Dionne Edwards’ feature debut Pretty Red Dress follows suit: her film’s sartorial namesake, a glamorously sequined shift, is the glittering centrepiece around which a tender family drama delicately pivots.
Recently released from prison, Travis (Natey Jones) struts around Lambeth High Street, coolly dipping his shoulder with each bouncing stride. Assured? Absolutely, particularly in the minds of his younger street acquaintances who look upon him with a fearful deference. However, beneath this confident exterior is a man struggling to realise his identity.
Travis’ partner Candice, played by X-Factor royalty Alexandra Burke, is, rather fittingly, an aspiring stage performer. Her dreams of making it big are closer than ever before as she eyes up the perfect role: the lead in a Tina Turner musical. Becoming “The Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll” is no easy feat, but Candice has talent to boot. The only thing she is missing is the perfect Turner-esque dress. Taking up the work offered to him by his uncomfortably officious older brother, Travis gets together enough money to buy the gloriously dazzling dress his starry-eyed other half spotted in a shop only a few scenes before.
With the dress now a mainstay in their apartment, Travis becomes infatuated. A series of slow push-ins smoothly communicate his growing fixation, and the dress’ oneiric red glow gives it a surreal quality akin to that of The Red Shoes (1948). In Pretty Red Dress though, such colour symbolises liberation. When no one else is around, Travis puts on the dress, a powerful outward expression of his innermost identity. We watch him trying on makeup and jewellery, studying his image in the mirror. It’s an intimate space that Jones conveys to us, one in direct contrast to the hypermasculine environment he occupies in Pretty Red Dress‘ opening moments and certainly one to which Candice has never been privy. That’s why then, when returning home early one afternoon, we watch with baited breath as Candice discovers her partner’s long-kept secret.
What ensues is a compelling story of self-realisation, expression and familial tumult, deconstructing gender roles and questioning how societal perceptions of masculinity inform our own responses to fluidity. The friction between Travis’ exterior persona and interior reality provides the drama with not only its most intimate point of conflict, but its patent universal appeal. Jones meets this burden with stunning grit, vulnerability and compassion.
Throughout Pretty Red Dress, Candice serves as an interesting counterpart, her unsteady reaction to seeing Travis in the dress switching the subjectivity of the film and revealing a harsh complexity of character. “Do you think you were born in the wrong body?” she unabashedly blurts out. It’s a very direct line of dialogue and one that sits clunkily within the tone of the scene—an intermittent issue of conspicuity in the writing. Nevertheless, her arc has a remarkable depth which enriches the emotional composition of Pretty Red Dress. Burke’s malleability as a performer enables her to deftly balance motherly responsibilities with that of Candice’s aspirations as a stage star. Her Tina audition is executed with colourful flair, propelling the narrative through some of its slower segments and imparting a tasteful sense of vibrancy.
It is through Kenisha (Temilola Olatunbosun), Travis and Candice’s teenage daughter, that Pretty Red Dress exhibits its warmest moments. Outside of the familial dysfunction at home, she finds herself contending with all manner of secondary school dilemmas, one of which involves a relationship with another girl who Kenisha is desperate to hide from her parents. There is an obvious parallel to her father’s own plight and one some audiences may find a little too convenient, but there is a lovely connection the two share because of it.
Edwards keeps the camera spry and employs a number of visual flourishes to chart these differing journeys of her characters; some of these work well to establish the unspoken, others end up feeling a tacked-on and out of place. The accompanying score too suffers from a similar misjudgement, with some piano medleys coming across as inordinately prescriptive, over-embellishing the action on screen. Nevertheless, such shortcomings are to be anticipated in a debut feature. Ultimately, Edwards proves herself to be an exciting storyteller and someone to keep tabs on in the coming years.
The Verdict
Pretty Red Dress is powerful, compelling cinema, telling a conventionally appealing narrative without straying into the sentimental. As contemporary discussions around gender and identity find themselves ricocheting between vitriol and sport, Edwards’ debut is a compassionate entry into the cinematic canon of fluidity. Rough around the edges but full of heart, it reminds us of the person beneath the socio-political noise and their struggle to find acceptance.
Pretty Red Dress is out in UK cinemas now.
Words by Samuel Parkes
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