Seeing the monopoly on Teen Coming of Age streaming movies, Amazon Prime decided to get into the game. Selah and the Spades is a good choice to start: giving Tayarisha Poe, a new voice in the movie a game, a platform to tell her story. Her movie is a reminder that boarding school high school, even more than the regular one, might be hell. Since there are so few adults to help kids build their society, Haldwell school can a ruthless place that resembles cartel behavior more than a place of learning.
Selah (Lovie Simone) runs the Spades, one of 5 “factions” that controls the social structure of Haldwell’s boarding school. Selah is positioned at the top of the food chain, threatened a little by the Bobbies, led by you guessed it, Bobby (Ana Mulvoy Ten). Selah, seeing her high school career coming to an end, seeks to create a legacy. She takes a shine to Paloma (Celeste O’Connor), the factionless underclassmen photographer. With some hesitation from Selah’s partner Maxxie (Jharrel Jerome), Selah takes Paloma under her wing, prepping her to take over the Spades, teaching the unassuming girl just how much effort goes into being the queen bee at a prestigious prep school.
Selah and the Spades gets a lot of mileage out of Tayarisha Poe’s genre aesthetic for the movie. Like Rian Johnson’s Brick, she filters the high school movie through the lens of a film noir, giving the film an ominous tone from the get go. The style does the heavy lifting to make sure people take the story seriously, letting Poe slowly unfurl the school’s criminal underbelly, and introduce us to the primary players. That deliberate languid pace also allows Poe to indulge in some artistic montages here and there, like an elaborate yearbook photo shoot or several drug induced dance sessions. These little touches elevate the story, which is more direct for a noir.
That’s because Poe wants Selah, a fresher type of high school character, to be fully realized onscreen. She found a good one in Lovie Simone. For a noir lead, Simone is wonderful portraying hardened exterior masking internal melancholy, equally emanating fear and empathy depending on the necessity of the scene. Poe has the story mostly filled with subdued characters who revolved around Simone’s star. Helping make her look good is the mega talented Jharrel Jerome, who ably plays the straight man to the more complicated Selah, making the most out of his screen time. Celeste O’Conner isn’t given too much to do here, playing a blank slate, but again, that’s ok, because the movie is designed to revolve around Lovie Simone’s presence, which O’Conner does fine.
Pieces of Selah and the Spades have been used countless times before, but this particular mix of story, characters, and genre is new, making the movie feel like a jumping off point to something different. I hope Tayarisha Poe gets more chances from Amazon to tell her stories, and great actors like Lovie Simone and Jharrel Jerome get more chances to show how great they are. Hey with new streaming services popping up all the time, Netflix and Amazon can’t stranglehold the teen coming of age market forever.