Something New

Kenya (Sanaa Lathan) wakes up to a world of, from her point of view, numerous couples immersed in the amorous splendor of Valentine’s Day. This could be a film about how the minority female power-businesswoman needs to take a long vacation from her dry, corporate existence, and wind up somewhere in the Caribbean with some smoldering hot guy who speaks in a Jamaican accent and has incredibly well-manicured hands despite there being nary a nail salon for three islands… But, this isn’t “How Stella Got Her Groove Back.”

Rather than taking the politically-correct route and being a film about black female empowerment, exploiting bad stereotypes of affluent African-Americans, this is a film about interpersonal disarmament exploiting slightly less offensive stereotypes of affluent African-Americans.

Kenya’s friend sets her up with a blind date. Up to this point, the dialogues with her outgoing and ambitious friends about “fine black men” and getting her “freak on” and whatever else it is white studio executives think black well-to-do women spend their days and nights restlessly pondering, seemed like a setup for a disappointingly typical film. However, they’re a setup for an upset.

When they meet on neutral ground, Kenya is expecting someone else. Fearing dirty looks for associating with a white man, she tries to establish her “blackness” by stopping to converse assertively with other blacks she doesn’t know. One might find it offensive that she does so by acting out a cultural stereotype that some whites seem to maintain of blacks: They are loud, assertive, and speak amongst themselves in the abrasive, grammatically-mangled vernacular that Americans have come to label “ebonics.” It would, perhaps, be offensive, to see such a portrayal, if it weren’t for the fact that it betrays a character flaw in Kenya, not in the film. The perception she holds of her culture is the product of her own ignorance… not ours, and not the director’s.

Brian Kelly (Simon Baker) is her friends gardener, as she discovers when she runs into him again at a party at her friend’s residence after the botched date. He’s extremely skilled at patiently seeing things through to fruition, which is of course a deliberate metaphor for his persistence toward Kenya. He understands that to make anything work, sustainably, one has to get their hands dirty. Kenya, on the other hand, is a neat freak. I quietly laughed when I saw the apartment bathed in beige because I thought I’ve seen far too many films where the powerful black business man or woman favors muted browns and tans as the director’s juvenile way of portraying the distanced reverence for a culture in which the characters do not actively participate. In this case, though, it’s Kenya’s mother that instilled in her the belief that bright colors are “for clowns and whores.” Imagine my amusement when Brian, visiting on a later date, actually observes the peculiar obsession, “What’s with all the beige? Safe… Impersonal. Doesn’t reflect you.”

The tensions rebuild after a night together, Brian, out of honest curiosity, asks about Kenya’s weave. She is extremely offended by the question, but later has the weave removed anyway. She fights back by associating Brian’s attachment to his dog with his whiteness. (Imagine it as a Jerry Seinfeld joke, “What’s the deal with white people and their dogs?”) Dogs, to her, aren’t beings… they’re just additional sources of clutter to interrupt the delicate condition in which she maintains her home.

Her mother, played persuasively as the society bitch by Alfre Woodard, has become used to the wealth her father’s successful career has afforded them. Her father, unlike many of her friends who pretend to appreciate culture, is a true academic, in the sense that he actively engages people of all walks—Brian included. I’m not entirely sure whether it’s a benefit or a detriment that the film basically runs just shy of the premise behind “White Man’s Burden,” which imagines a world in which whites are the economically-disadvantaged and blacks historically have wielded the power in American society. However, Brian, in his tattered working clothes, only appears as though he’s opposite the tracks from Kenya. In truth, the only reference to his wealth is when he acknowledges he left the corporate world to manage his own business and has kept it running for several years. It’s possible he could be wealthier than she, we don’t know—it doesn’t matter.

While there’s a manufactured subplot involving the so-called “black tax,” an example of which involves one client’s constant suspicion and discomfort at having his potential merger analyzed by a black woman (a minority of a minority), what I liked was the way in which the situation is handled by her superior. He, being white, could have been played as the caricaturesque evil white boss who fires her for not pandering to the client’s irrational fear and bigotry. Instead, she makes a business decision to let her manager handle the client… after all, accountants, white or black, are in the business of making money, not social change. However, the manager only reluctantly steps in, otherwise trusting her implicitly because only thing that is of genuine value to their business is her ability to make profitable decisions for them and their clients.

Another thing that intrigued me is Brian. Portrayed by the Australian Simon Baker, he’s unconventionally handsome. I don’t mean to suggest that the film falls into the rich-girl-goes-slumming stock plot… I’m just impressed that a bigger star with a more conventionally-attractive appearance wasn’t shoehorned into an otherwise entertaining story simply for the sake of drawing audiences.

In the end, it’s a satisfying film, but probably as forgettable as any other “opposites attract” romance. The movie is stuck taking itself too seriously such that the moments of humorous relief are handled daintily as though the director is just as afraid as the characters to ask truly provoking questions along the boundary of racial tension. Then again, the film is constrained from the beginning by working within the burned-out stereotypes of the straightlaced, resolute career-minded wealth seeker versus the free-spirited entrepreneurial expressive artist. When are we going to have a film about a female, black nerdy physics graduate teaching assistant who falls in love with a middle-aged, Asian mortician living in Lansing, Michigan?

Something New • Dolby® Digital surround sound in select theatres • Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 • MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sexual references. • Distributed by Focus Features