Nappily Ever After

Girl meets boy. Boy is successful. On his way to the top. Girl recognizes his potential. And has her own. Girl is perfect, perhaps too much so. Boy is bored. Boy won’t marry girl. Girl shaves her head and sends a giant ‘f you’ to all the conventions of perfectionism. Her job and her mother’s views get thrown out with the dishwater. Nappily Ever After had more potential than the director might have realized. It lightly broached topics related to the shaping of a black woman’s identity, misguided vapid relationships, and navigating life’s harsh and sometimes unattainable expectations. But that’s all it did. It broached the topic. And the 98-minute runtime does just what it promises – it falls short of 100%. These topics could have been fleshed out beautifully. Like the juxtaposition of the lead’s preoccupation with false imagery and its parallel that is matched in her carefully pressed mane. The harshness of manner that she exhibits and how this coincides with the hot plates altering her natural hair and otherwise natural state of being. And parts of it just didn’t make sense. Like, if she’s been with this guy for two years, is it realistic that she can get up, do her makeup, have her mother flatten her hair and return to bed on a cotton pillowcase and appear flawlessly perched for morning sex? And that in those two years, she still must fight her man during coitus to avoid having his hands run through and possibly ruin her freshly laid frontal? But how? I would have loved to see a more challenged yet triumphant resolution to themes that seemed to tiptoe into the entangled web that is black masculinity. I would have loved to dive into this single father’s soul and enjoy the marriage of his self-assuredness model a wonderful foil to the lead’s self-aggrandizement. This film tries to do just that, but is quickly met with angry walk-offs and an ending that leaves the watcher questioning if there was really a relationship there in the first place. Waiting for part 2…