Miss Juneteenth

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Set against the backdrop of a small-town Texas wasteland, Miss Juneteenth tells the earnest, heartfelt story of the Black female experience. Turquoise ‘Turq’ Jones (Nicole Beharie) is a single mother to fourteen turning fifteen-year-old Kai (Alexis Chikaeze). As Miss Juneteenth 2004, Turq pushes her daughter into participating in the annual pageant, hoping that a full scholarship to a historically Black college or university will set Kai on an inevitable path to success. Kai is consistently disinterested in the Miss Juneteenth pageant. Instead, she just wants to be a teenager, try out for her school dance team and hang out with her crush.

The tense mother-daughter relationship is at the heart of Miss JuneteenthNicole Beharie’s performance is sublime, perfectly capturing a mother trying to live out her failed dreams through her daughter. Turq is pushy, always asking Kai’s unreliable father, Ronnie (Kendrick Sampson) for money so Kai can have the best pageant gown and a better shot at winning. Yet she remains caring towards Kai, maintaining the gentle balance between authority figure and friend. One particular scene, in which Beharie sits on her porch taking drags off a cigarette wearing red gown and a tiara perched on her head, captures Turq’s character perfectly. Alexis Chikaeze is the ideal [k1] complement to Beharie; the pair bring a dynamic and intimate relationship to life. Chikaeze’s Kai has just the right amount of teenage rebellion to push back against her mother’s ‘pageant mom’ tendencies. 

Kendrick Sampson’s Ronnie is Kai’s father and, though separated, maintains a physical relationship with Turq. While he loves his girls, he is often selfish with his money, putting it towards himself instead of his daughter. Still, Ronnie and Kai have a close bond with is evident in the one specific stand-out scene of Kai teaching her father the latest TikTok dance. Other characters, although not as fleshed out, still contribute to Kai and Turq’s relationship and remain integral to the story while keeping the focus on the mother-daughter pair.

Both Miss Juneteenth’s score and soundtrack accompany the pace and tone of the film. Emily Rice’s score in particular captures Turquoise’s inner world, becoming reflective of the film’s themes of love and community. Daniel Patterson’s cinematography comes in warm hues, bringing forth the gold tones of early summer. The film also brings in classic American colours of red, white and blue to juxtapose the freedom of Juneteenth with the apparent freedom of the Fourth of July. During a parade scene, Turq even wears a Juneteenth shirt with July 4th crossed out to drive the point home further that Black people were not yet free when the founding fathers wrote ‘all men are created equal.’

Writer and director, Channing Godfrey Peoples’ debut film takes the time to tell the audience some history of Juneteenth, a holiday integral to the African American community, yet one often unheard of by outsiders. It was not until June 19th 1865, two years after Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, and almost 100 years after the Declaration of Independence, that Union army general, Gordon Granger rode into Galveston, Texas with federal orders that all slaves in the state were freed. The director uses Juneteenth’s history as a backdrop to Turq and Kai’s relationship. She handles her characters so delicately, producing a slice-of-life story. Channing Godfrey Peoples’ Miss Juneteenth isn’t necessarily a commentary on Black freedom. It is a portrait of Black womanhood, of Black people existing in their own lives, and Channing Godfrey Peoples has more stories to tell.

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