“Miss Juneteenth” richly captures the slow pace of ebbing small-town Texas life, even if you might wish there were a bit more narrative momentum to pick up the slack in writer-director Channing God…
’s first feature. She’s got a very relatable heroine in Nicole Beharie’s Turquoise, an erstwhile local beauty queen whose crown proved the peak rather than the kickoff to her dream of a better life — high hopes now transferred to a daughter reluctant to inherit that burden.
Juneteenth is celebrated in many African American communities, but got its start and raison d’être in the Lone Star state, where it marked the abolition of slavery in 1865 — a tardy two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation. Beharie’s heroine had her moment of glory in 2004 as the local pageant winner, a title she worked hard for, as she does everything.Yet she’s still stuck in a hometown that remains poor and segregated , working two job and behind on her bills.
These conflicts simmer nicely, yet never quite come to a boil in a film that isn’t dull but can feel laid-back to a fault. It doesn’t help that some of the dialogue is a bit muddy , and the soundtrack of R&B and church music seemed to be mixed too low at the Sundance premiere. This movie needs at least an occasional surge of energy, either emotional and aesthetic. Instead it stays on too even a keel, with some scenes meandering to the brink of rudderlessness.
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