In a future world covered in deserts where water is a rare commodity, you might find someone like Mel Gibson in leather or Clint Eastwood slinging guns. Or you might find Gugu Mbatha-raw in this charming little movie that plays like an antidote for the big-budget plot-driven sci-fi superhero flicks of our era. This is an American Midwest story that operates as a chamber piece about the women in a small family, a feminist Black folktale in the form of arthouse indie cinema.
Mbatha-raw plays Ruth, a lone vagrant in the desert wastes prone to seizures. Unfortunately, her seizures seem to cause earthquakes, a phenomenon that has caught the attention of scientists (and maybe the government) who seek to capture and study her. After a narrow escape, Ruth returns to her home, now occupied by her mother Bo (Lorraine Toussaint) and daughter Lila (Saniyya Sidney). These two women share telekinetic powers: they can dissolve and reassemble material objects, and can see a mysterious spectrum of light they call "the colors." Lila has never met her mother, and so the two begin their relationship on timid ground, while Bo and Ruth seem to have some unresolved history.
We learn along with Lila that Ruth once had the same powers as her mother, but they have long since been neglected. The suggestion is that some trauma -- or, perhaps, the normalized trauma enacted on black women in America -- caused Ruth to suppress her abilities, which then manifested as the disastrous seizures we have witnessed. Bo and Lila work with Ruth to make peace with herself, but their idyll is broken when the scientist returns. Eventually, Ruth realizes her potential, breaking the drought and, enabled by the sacrifice of her mother, fleeing with her daughter to a safe haven.
Does it all sound a bit weird? It is, but in the best way. Major elements here are laughably bizarre, including Ruth's unexplained control over nature (earthquakes, the drought) and the exact nature of these titular colors we occasionally see but seem to have no concrete significance. And that ending: sure, it's heartbreaking when Bo gives herself up to be studied by the white scientist, but then to have Ruth flee with Lila for a safe haven in...Rome? What?
But there is no denying that these elements mean something to director and writer Julia Hart, whose vision here is myth-making gold. Not unlike the confidence David Lowery has in folktale-craft, Hart here keeps everything at a slow and steady pace, letting us soak in the scenery, details, and characters in peace. And all that's to say nothing of Mbatha-raw's performance, which deftly straddles wry humor and genuine heart, or Toussaint, whose Bo is a creature of rare beauty and grace. And while the performances and aesthetic are entrancing, it's no less brilliant of the film to force its audience to do some work along the way: filling in blanks and allowing the strangeness of Fast Color to charm us.
