Barry Jenkins’ Medicine for Melancholy is an uncommonly fine film, and easily one of the best I’ve seen this year so far. Indie romances don’t always sit well with me, probably even well before Natalie Portman gave Zach Braff her headphones, precisely because they follow such a well-worn formula. But Jenkins gets the formula — for his debut film! — absolutely right (and more): a kick-ass soundtrack (follow the link and you’ll see what I mean), two attractive leads, and a beautiful city.
Halfway through the movie, it didn’t seem that this seemingly shaky combination of Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise and Rebecca Solnit’s “Hollow City” would work. But it’s to Jenkins’ credit that Medicine for Melancholy — essentially a “Sunday morning after the Saturday one-night stand” movie — pulls this off beautifully. (Visually there are some standout scenes as well, like a rapturous carousel ride, and an extended wordless dance sequence at The Knockout.)
On paper it seems iffy: two hungover twenty-somethings stumble out of bed, have the most uncomfortable breakfast afterwards, and go their separate ways — the girl (“Angela”) to the Marina, the boy (Micah) to the Tenderloin. We know they’ll inevitably meet up, and they do, and threaded through all this are earnest discussions on race and class. It seems like an academic treatise, and at times it does (notably, in a visit to the Museum of the African Diaspora), but once it becomes clear that Micah’s anger is inextricably tied to place, to a city that has increasingly pushed people of color out in another diaspora of its own (particularly African Americans, a frighteningly tiny 7 percent of San Francisco’s population), then the film coheres satisfyingly, in ways deeper and more meaningful than indie romantic comedies usually do.
Oh, and did I mention that it’s a love story? And no, I’m not talking about the two leads — Medicine for Melancholy is a rapturous, bittersweet love letter to San Francisco as well.
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