‘The Young Wife’ Review: The Nervous Bride Saga Gets a Sumptuous, Stylized Makeover
variety.comLisa Kennedy Just because Celestina, the soon-to-be young wife in the “The Young Wife” told friends and family that while the honor of their presence was requested, they would be attending a party, not a wedding, doesn’t make it so.
The weight of family, community and ritual aren’t so easily evaded. Or embraced. So, on the day of her and River’s nuptials, she appears to be wrestling less with the meaning of marriage and more with the weight of the word “wife.” Warm hearts and cooling feet is nothing new for movies, of course, but Kiersey Clemons’ portrayal of Celestina — her head spinning — raises the stakes of love and liberty.
Writer-director Tayarisha Poe has populated her sophomore feature with characters of a neo-bohemian, united colors-of-who-the-fuck-cares aura.
Guests arrive with sartorial flash, expressive finery, hairdos that signal independence for days and attitudes that combine and recombine the traditional with the rebellious. “Aura” is not a bad word for this tone-poem of a movie that begins “Once upon a time, there was a woman who loved a man, and he loved her back.” If Poe’s 2019 debut “Selah and the Spades”— set amid the cliques at an East Coast prep school — tossed and teased the high-school meanies genre, this film plies the fairytale quandaries of a female protagonist with creative jukes toward Black futurism.
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