Barry Jenkins's Medicine for Melancholy is a small, gorgeous film whose lo-fi exterior and romantic mood exist alongside a rather pessimistic view of 21st century urban life. The set-up is simple: Micah (Wyatt Cenac) and Jo (Tracey Heggins) sleep together after a drunken party. Morning after awkwardness turns into a day of tentative getting to know each other after Jo leaves a wallet in their cab and Micah tracks her down. We learn early on of Jo's white, out-of-town boyfriend so the time that the attractive young couple spends together is necessarily fleeting. But what a day. A casual errand turns into a trip to the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD), more sex, dancing, and the kind of conversations that it's maybe only possible to have with someone you've just met.
While parts of Medicine for Melancholy make for a beautiful idyll the film also functions as a tribute to cities (San Francisco in particular) and the way people find each other in them, as well as a lament for the possibility of the city as anything other than a theme park for the monied. (James Laxton did the cinematography with color being selectively washed out in post-production) Micah and Jo are framed against the architecture of San Francisco, and the lack of extras and empty streets are a reminder of how it's possible to feel very much alone in a city of millions. When I've spent time in major cities I've always been struck by the sheer energy it takes just to get from one place to another, and when you're that exhausted a simple dinner in an apartment kitchen or an evening in an intimate dance club has a special resonance. Yet not everything in Medicine for Melancholy is as mellow as the joint Micah and Jo share. Cenac's dry performance conceals deep reserves of anger; he's tired of seeing native San Franciscans getting pushed out of their homes in the name of progress and of seeing African-American women (in a city with a 7% black population) date outside their race. The conversations about race in the last 20 minutes are too spot-on and messagey, but they're Jenkins way of working the movie around to the fact that these two can't work. (It's no accident that the transplanted Jo has never heard of MoAD) Micah falls in love with Jo during their day together, but the real romance of Medicine for Melancholy is between a man and a city that offers up unexpected pleasures even while turning its back on its most faithful residents.
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