The world of an elite boarding school proves as dangerous and cutthroat as organized crime in Tayarisha Poe’s stylish, assured debut feature Selah and the Spades. Adults are almost entirely absent from the story about the five "factions" that run the underworld of the fancy Haldwell School in Pennsylvania, led by Selah Summers (Lovie Simone) and her group, the Spades. Selah is a ruthless overlord in a peppy spirit-squad outfit, controlling the trade in drugs and alcohol for the student body.
Her constant companion is her right-hand man Maxxie (Jharrel Jerome). But when transfer student Paloma (Celeste O’Connor) shows up, Selah decides that she has a new protégé, taking the initially shy Paloma under her wing and grooming her to take over the Spades after Selah graduates. The young upstart who rises in the ranks is a familiar plot of mafia movies, and Selah and the Spades mirrors that progression, as Paloma first idolizes and then criticizes Selah, while Maxxie finds himself pushed to the margins, punished for the sin of being distracted by a new girlfriend.
Poe presents this story within the framework of a school where students are all pressured to excel at the highest levels, along with the typical stresses of being a teenager. At Haldwell, Selah is the unquestioned queen bee, but her insecurities come out during one of the only scenes to feature an adult character, a visit home in which Selah’s cold, demanding mom (Gina Torres) berates her for her less-than-perfect academic achievements and coerces her into committing to a college she doesn’t want to attend.
That brief moment allows for the greatest insight into Selah’s character, since she spends all of her time at school crafting the perfect image for herself (she’s the kind of person who practices smiling in the mirror). She delivers a mesmerizing speech, mostly addressed directly to the camera, early in the movie, calmly explaining the expectations placed on teenage girls to look exactly a certain way -- not too suggestive, not too prudish -- in order to satisfy male expectations, and the way that the self-directed spirit squad has reclaimed those image standards for itself.
That’s the movie’s clearest element of social commentary, and overall Poe is more interested in clever dialogue and elaborate set design than she is in making a point about society. Haldwell is an effortlessly diverse environment, in which students of various races rise to the top, and there isn’t a single mention of racial prejudice. But putting black students front and center in the way that Poe does makes a statement without explicitly saying anything, and Poe certainly knows what kind of impact that will have, even in an unspoken way.
The movie also avoids the trap of creating love triangles or generating romantic intrigue among its main characters. When Paloma asks Selah if she’s ever dated Maxxie, Selah scoffs and then brushes off the entire idea of dating, in what could be an expression of her single-minded devotion to the Spades but could also be a subtle expression of asexuality. Selah is baffled at the peers she sees crying in the girls’ bathroom over broken hearts. "Why not just do things that keep you from crying in bathrooms?" she asks bluntly.
That’s not to say that Selah isn’t focused on what some would consider frivolous concerns. While she’s not above delivering a beating to someone who snitches on her to a rival faction, the school underworld’s biggest concern in the movie is when the previously ineffectual headmaster (Grey’s Anatomy’s Jesse Williams) cancels prom in response to the rise in illicit activity. The mounting of an alternative prom in the woods outside the school sets the stage for the climactic showdown between Selah and Paloma, and also provides Poe with the chance to create more stylized images, with smeared colors and vertiginous camera angles.
The style is really the greatest appeal of Selah and the Spades, especially as the plot starts to lose steam in the second half. The set design, costumes and cinematography all immerse the viewer in a kind of alternate universe, to go along with the deliberately mannered dialogue and performances. Like Rian Johnson’s Brick, Selah and the Spades melds the hard-boiled crime and teen genres perfectly, using each to reflect on the other. Poe’s film is also timeless, with contemporary fashion, slang and vehicles, but no cell phones or computers, conveying a time period that is simultaneously modern and retro.
Even when the plot lags, the movie crackles with energy, thanks to the charismatic performances and Poe’s bold, confident direction. A selection at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, Selah and the Spades is a remarkable debut, heralding Poe as a major filmmaking talent, and her stars as actors to watch. Like Selah herself, it’s unexpected and entirely commanding.
Starring Lovie Simon, Celeste O’Connor, Jharrel Jerome, Ana Mulvoy Ten and Jesse Williams, Selah and the Spades premieres Friday on Amazon Prime.