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Writer-director Barry Jenkins’ “don’t call it Mumblecore!” debut examines the black hipster in a vanillafying San Francisco. Micah (Wyatt Cenac) and Jo’ (Tracey Heggins), of the city’s meager seven percent black population, have a one-night stand that reluctantly grows into a two-night affair. Lollygagging, à la Before Sunrise, through Frisco the Morning After, they wander (or bike) between apartments, museums, cafés, carousels and discothèques, usually chatting about gentrification and African-American identity. Too often that dialogue smacks of college-freshman outrage — “who gives a shit about what society thinks?” — and stale insight, though its identity-crisis concerns and sense of injustice are well-intentioned. The biggest problem in the didactic, aggressively literal and melancholy-inducing Medicine is its tendency to proclaim its points of view rather than express them visually, or dramatically. But when its soundtrack and characters quiet down, as they frequently do, it becomes a sincere portrait of Bay Area outcasts. More indies should shut up so often.
Opens January 30 at IFC Center
Opens January 30 at IFC Center
