Queen & Slim Updates the Outlaw Couple Film in a Timely, Powerful Way

Variations on the Bonnie and Clyde story are about as old as Bonnie and Clyde themselves; within less than two decades of the infamous couples’ crime spree, film noirs like They Live By Night and Gun Crazy were exploiting the romantic crime couple as a cinematic subgenre. Of course it gained exceptional renewed popularity with Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde in 1967, not only ushering in the New Hollywood era, but becoming a rallying cry for a series of imitators trying to capture a degree of that films’ magic. Some are quite good, like Terence Malick’s debut, Badlands; others are lacking, like Spielberg’s early movie The Sugarland Express or Scorsese’s, Boxcar Bertha. But the greatest has to be Thelma & Louise, which I caught in a screening earlier this year, for a number of reasons but principally for its’ feminist twist on the material.

Queen & Slim, the debut feature from music video director Melina Matsoukas, offers a similar play on the story: what if Bonnie and Clyde were black? And what if their crime was simply an act of self-defence that they knew they would be unfairly prosecuted for? This is what happens to the title characters of Queen & Slim, played terrifically by Jodie Turner-Smith and Daniel Kaluuya and never referred to by those or any other names for the duration of the film. Pulled over for the flimsiest of pretenses following a blind date, a police officer makes increasingly ludicrous demands of them before shooting Queen (an attorney threatening to record the scene) in the leg and subsequently being fatally shot by Slim during a struggle. From here the film follows the fugitives across state lines (they started in Ohio) and in various cars with the ultimate goal of escaping to Cuba.

The movie draws attention to the namelessness of its protagonists, hiding their identities in news broadcasts, working around name-specific dialogue, and cutting off lines about to reveal them –screenwriter Lena Waithe is determined these characters have that symbolic universality, that they stand in in some way for young black people across the United States and represent the public and media’s impersonal relationship to stories of police injustice against African-Americans. It’s an interesting narrative choice, and one that is effective without reducing the characters to archetypes. Queen and Slim have personalities: she’s level-headed, intelligent, and strong-willed in spite of a traumatic past, he’s anxious and spiritual, but with a charming sense of humour. They are a couple whose differences are glaring, before all went down there likely wouldn’t have been a second date, but they complement each other in ways that are essential to their survival as a unit. Turner-Smith and Kaluuya have excellent chemistry that grows more apparent as their relationship blossoms and their characters influence each other –Queen becoming more impulsive and liberated while Slim attains new courage and confidence. In contrast to Bonnie and Clyde and many of their descendants, not only are Queen and Slim not criminals, but they are fundamentally good people.

There is a backstory that throws some grey into that distinction of Queen though that isn’t strictly necessary for her character, except to provide her with a particularly unique family demon. And indeed the movie is weaker when it delves into specifics of its protagonists’ lives, lessening that intended ubiquity a tad. The film also mixes its message during an ill-thought out riot sequence that seems to take the side of the cops-as-victims narrative ultimately leading to an action that undercuts the films’ thesis. What’s more is that this demonstration of violence is cut against a sex scene with clear metaphorical ambition, but with such severity that both scenes are more jarring than genuinely evocative. The movie is a little rough in terms of plot structure too; as much as the reasoning for the pairs’ going on the run checks out, it still comes across as too quick and too drastic a decision, especially given Queen’s established rationality.

These weaknesses mostly pale however in light of how exquisite the film itself is. Shot by Tat Radcliffe in a raw, desaturated grade and with deep lighting choices, the film looks vividly sharp yet natural in a manner that almost resembles Moonlight, grounding the story while also highlighting its soulful romanticism. The tone meanders between tense and hopeful, frightening and joyful, touching every sensation to come from such an odyssey and which Matsoukas gracefully harmonizes into a beauteous whole. Her music video background gives her a rich understanding and stylistic intuition in how she composes and conveys romantic and significant character beats with admirable subtlety and passion. And Devonte Hynes’ score adds to the poetic atmosphere. Waithes’ narrative remains provocative and pointed though, the movies’ underlying focus being directed at race-based police brutality and the systematic way it harms peoples’ lives and undermines any trust in authority. At a few points in the film, Queen and Slim marginally escape the police (though refreshingly without the conventional action sequence or car chase). And yet that threat is a constant, no better illustrated than in the movies’ ending. Waithe wants to incite an aggravated emotional response, and here is where she undoubtedly does it, powerfully hammering home her message without ambiguity or pretense.

Bokeem Woodbine, playing a pimp relative of Queen, straight up calls the pair “the black Bonnie and Clyde” at one point. It’s an association the film is making no efforts to hide.  But in boasting this reference openly, Queen & Slim is also subverting it, and denouncing the gleeful rebelliousness and white privilege baked into it and other such stories. A modern day Bonnie and Clyde, the film posits, not only wouldn’t be white, but would be victims of an unfair system designed to punish them without recourse –to the point becoming outlaws is a necessity more than a choice. And given all we’ve seen as the 2010s come to a close, it’s hard to argue the accuracy of that assessment. 

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