Beauty

Consider Beauty an elegy with an edge, one that touches on faith and financials, love and condemnation.

Beauty ends before it has really dug into anything of consequence. Its heroine, whom we know is headed for trouble, is left stranded in the middle of her own story.

Its soundtrack is enjoyable, and Dosunmu’s work with director of photography Benoît Delhomme is pleasing to the eye. However, the slightness and muddled storytelling of Beauty mar a film which at times feels it has something to say.

While Beauty doesn’t really work, it does fail in interesting ways.

In lieu of a throughline, Beauty offers beautiful, indulgent vignettes — aesthetically pleasing and immersive episodes lacking in ideas but full of vibes.

Dosunmu, an established music video director, assembles beautiful shots of longing, pain, yearning, closeness and jealousy between Beauty and girlfriend Jazz (Aleyse Shannon). But strung together by Waithe’s too-spare script, they feel isolated and go nowhere.

Dosunmu’s airless directing and Waithe’s thin script only amount to loud allegory that never goes anywhere and drowns out any compelling ideas that might be worth singing.