5/5
Radha Blank’s The 40-Year-Old Version is an absolutely brilliant comedy – one of the most effortlessly charming films of the year. On the one hand, it’s a biting satire of the ‘poverty porn’ white audiences and producers want from Black artists. And yet, in the midst of the satire, there’s an honest exploration of what it means to find your voice as an artist when everyone around you is encouraging you to compromise. Blank also looks at the ways that refusing to face loss and grief can hold us back and acknowledges the struggle to break through as an artist once you reach middle-age. Blank takes these themes and weaves them together into a richly layered narrative without a wasted moment. The fact that Blank, playing a fictionalized version of herself, allows her character to be as broken and dysfunctional, as selfish and hurtful as she is at points in the film, is a testament to her honesty as a filmmaker and performer. Her use of 35mm, black-and-white film is gorgeous, capturing a warmth and texture in every scene, while still allowing for a world that has lost its inspiration – with color only punctuating in brief bursts as she envisions the play she’s trying to write or as she remembers her mother’s art. And as she turns to hip-hop as a form of uncompromising self-expression, not only is the music fantastic, but the film avoids falling into the easy clichés of the traditional musician narrative. Blank is a phenomenal filmmaker, crafting a delightful film that manages to subvert narrative expectations, while still managing to be a crowd pleaser.
