Residue
Written and directed by Merawi Gerima
Starring Obinna Nwachukwu, Dennis Lindsey, Melody A. Tally and Ramon Thompson
Not rated - language, violent situations
Running Time: 1 hour and 30 minutes
by Audrey Callerstrom
A year after The Last Black Man in San Francisco took viewers on the journey of a black man reclaiming his childhood Victorian-era house comes another film about gentrification, this time on the opposite coast. Residue is about the gentrification of Washington D.C., specifically in Eckington, where filmmaker Jay (Obinna Nwachukwu) grew up. Jay has since left D.C. for Los Angeles to be a filmmaker. “Mr. University,” an old neighbor calls him. Jay’s childhood friends and neighbors are resentful that Jay left D.C., and the reunion comes with complications. Jay’s parents continue to get eviction notices and offers to sell their house; Jay’s friend Delonte (Dennis Lindsey) is resentful that Jay left; Jay’s friend Dion (Jamal Graham) is in jail; and Jay’s friend Demetrius is nowhere to be found.
Released by ARRAY, Ava DuVernay’s production company, Residue follows Jay as he navigates his drastically changed neighborhood with the intent of working on a script about the street he grew up on, Q Street. The title, Residue, comes from a scene where a neighbor’s dog makes waste on the lawn of Jay’s mom, Lavonne (Melody A. Tally). “It leaves a residue,” she tells the dog owners. Writer/director Merawi Gerima obscures or doesn’t fully show most of the faces of the newer neighbors. This creates a greater sense of anonymity, a divide between these new residents that claim to be making the city “cleaner” (read: whiter) and the people who grew up there. Jay scolds his girlfriend, Blue (Taline Stewart) for casually accepting a smoke at a white neighbor’s party, knowing that’s something that could put a person of color in jail. The biggest focus is on Jay’s relationship with Delonte, who does not see the merit in Jay’s return. To Delonte, Jay is a stranger who can stop by Eckington when it’s convenient, and go back to L.A. Jay wasn’t witness to the changes in the neighborhood that everyone else was.
This is Gerima’s first film, and it’s a personal one. Gerima is from D.C. and moved away to study film. It’s a personal film that makes some interesting choices, namely in how it obscures some of the faces of the “new” people in the neighborhood. Girls who talk loudly at brunch, making tasteless jokes about how they live near “crackhouses,” are shot from below. However, there are some choices here that do not work to the film’s benefit. When taking in a scene, I ask “where does the director want me to look?” In a few scenes in Residue, Gerima films scenes of people talking from behind. Where does Gerima want us to look? It’s not as though it’s an initial shot, and then in the next take, we are up close. This shot lasts the whole scene, and it robs the viewer of seeing the actors react to each other. In another scene, Lavonne is giving Jay a stern talk about how people like the couple with the dog are “decoys,” trying to provoke Jay into getting into greater trouble. This would otherwise be an important, standout scene, but Lavonne’s face is obscured by a car door.
I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about how lively and original the songs on the soundtrack are. The film opens with “Roll Call” by Critical Condition Band which is played over footage of the D.C. community in protest. It also features “Kemosabe” by Black Alley, a “hood rock” band. Both bands are from D.C. These songs and city noise (construction, cicadas, cars) act as the film’s soundtrack, but there are also gaps in the film, absent of dialogue or music, where the film loses some of its momentum. The performances are a little inconsistent. The standout here is Lindsey as Delonte, particularly in a scene where Delonte tells Jay what his idea for a film would look like. Delonte is hostile, resentful, but above all, he is hurt. Obinna Nwachukwu does well with Jay, but we never get the impression that Jay is there to write a film, or that he makes films at all. He’s also given a girlfriend as an afterthought; she’s in a small number of scenes and doesn’t serve any purpose, nor do they act like people who know each other. Close to the film’s end, Gerima stages an intense scene, an examination of gentrification through a series of events that start with white people crossing the street to avoid Jay. Residue is a film that I had to let sink in. While I was watching it, I was distracted by some of the camerawork and lack of direction for the performers. Ultimately, those things don’t hinder Gerima’s film as a whole. It’s a bold debut, one man’s observation on what it’s like to take home for granted only to see it slowly be taken away.
Open in select theaters and on Netflix September 17.
