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A 'Love' That Defies Stereotypes

A’90s LOVE story, it seems, must have its share of tension, mixed signals, ambivalence, caution and sexual frustration. "Love Jones," the directing debut by Theodore Witcher, has all that and more. Maybe it has too much.

Witcher, who has worked in Hollywood as a writer, tells an often funny love story between young, aspiring writer Darius Lovehall (Larenz Tate) and budding photographer Nina Mosley (Nia Long). But it’s obvious from viewing this beautifully conceived and shot movie that Witcher’s real passion here is to paint the scenery and backdrop he knows well -- the social lives of young, educated, creative African Americans. He really likes people. He likes the faces, bar scene and traded witticisms at an open mike poetry cafe. He likes folks getting wild and gyrating at house parties. He likes those girlfriend sessions where women speak in a bawdy fashion about male genitalia. He likes the endless merry-go-round of relationships. He knows how black people are really living, and for most, that’s not in the kind of poverty or with the kind of pathology more often depicted by Hollywood.

The love affair between Darius and Nina is rendered with less passion. Part of what pushes us away is the tentative, on-and-off nature of the relationship. This isn’t an up close and personal love story as much as a yarn about the difficulty of connecting. But a little more chemistry between Long and Tate would have gone a long way to spark the on-screen flame. Long, last seen in "Friday," gives Nina such a chilly exterior that for much of the film, you have a hard time really feeling her character. And Tate -- whose credits include "Menace II Society," "The Inkwell" and "Dead Presidents" -- simply hasn’t developed the mature screen sex appeal to carry off this romantic lead.

But this film’s deficiencies shouldn’t keep crowds away. Hollywood, in general, seems allergic to black romance. At least in this film, which won the Sundance Audience Award, Witcher knows that black love exists. He has made the effort to portray it and the community, not in stereotypical fashion, but with as much honesty as he could muster.

LOVE JONES (R) — Contains sexual situations and profanity.