Love Jones movie review & film summary (1997)

As their relationship develops, we see it in the context of the world they live in, a world of African-American artists, writers, teachers and intellectuals. The film's writer-director, Theodore Witcher, says he wanted to suggest a modern Chicago version of the Harlem Renaissance, but this is the 1920s filtered through modern eyes, and some of the parties they attend have conversation that sounds like hip campus faculty talk.

The relationship between Darius and Nina proceeds, but not smoothly. Is it just a sex thing? They talk about that. She's on the rebound from her last man, and tells Darius "the timing is bad,'' but it starts looking pretty good. And their chemistry, as characters and actors, is hot. There's a sensuous scene where they go to her place, and she loads her camera and tells him to strip, and shoots him while he's teasing her. This nicely turns the gender tables on the famous "Blow Up" scene where the photographer made love through his camera.

Witcher's screenplay is not content to move from A to B to love. There are hurt feelings and misunderstandings, and Nina goes to New York at one point to see her former finance and find out if there's still life in their relationship. I didn't buy that New York trip; it seemed clear to me that Darius was her love, and if she was merely testing him, why take a chance of losing a good thing? Darius starts seeing another woman, she starts dating his best friend, and a completely avoidable misunderstanding develops.

I felt frustrated, but I was happy to. When movie characters inspire my affection, so that I want them to stay together when they don't, that shows the movie's working. And there is a very nice sequence when they both end up at a party with other people, and see each other across the room, and are hurt.

These two characters are charismatic. There's electricity when they go on a date to the weekly steppers'ball hosted by Herb Kent the Cool Gent, who plays himself. Steppin' is a Chicago dance style that comes out of jitterbug, cooled down, and as we watch this scene we get that interesting feeling when a fiction film edges toward documentary and shows us something we haven't seen before.

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