Amazon.com Essentials:
Spike Lee made a splash in the independent film world with his debut
feature, an inventive low-budget romance with a strong-willed heroine. Nola
Darling (Tracy Camilla Johns) can't decide among her three boyfriends:
serious but sweet Jamie (Tommy Redmond Hicks), self-centered clotheshorse
Greer (John Canada Terrell), and goofy, wisecracking bike messenger Mars
Blackmon (Lee). Within this loose story line Lee launches into a character
study of Darling and offers a slice of black urban life rarely seen on the
screen. According to Lee's published diary, he interviewed dozens of women
and gathered feedback on screenplay from female friends, and his efforts
show. Nola is an unapologetic, sexually independent character who resists
the efforts of the men in her life to change who she is to please them--the
wonderful concluding twist thumbs its nose at romantic conventions and gives
Nola her
due. Lee combines direct address and documentary techniques with a simple,
often elegant narrative style to create a multilayered portrait of Nola
and her men and question perceptions and conventions of sex, sexuality, and
relationships in the modern world. Though somewhat primitive in the light
of his more accomplished works, this first feature introduces Lee as a
fresh voice and a creative force to be reckoned with. --Sean Axmaker
