Selah and the Spades review – promising high school noir doesn’t quite grip

This stylish debut from writer-director Tayarisha Poe is a curious object. At times fresh and original; at others, contrived and undercooked. Not quite of our own world, it takes place in an American preparatory school where five factions battle for authority over the student body. Think Rushmore by way of Heathers.

One such faction, “The Spades,” is led by Selah (Lovie Simone), a charismatic, smart, and occasionally ruthless cheerleader who has clawed her way to the top. Loyal pal Maxxie (Jharrel Jerome) serves as her right hand man whilst also keeping tabs on the business: that is, securing and then distributing drugs to the others students – a plot point that never feels quite at ease with everything else that’s going on here.

This faction-based premise has the air of “young adult novel,” or an anime show aimed at teens. Here it’s played deadly straight, as kids are made to appear smarter than the adults who surround them, like well-meaning but naive Headmaster (Jessie Williams). Or at least that’s how the kids see it, though the film seems to agree with them.

There’s a noir-like influence on the material, not only in the patter of the dialogue, but in the film’s twisty plot. Rian Johnson experimented similarly when he transposed a 50s noir aesthetic to an American high school in his own, richly-drawn debut Brick (clearly an inspiration), casting Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a reluctant teen gumshoe out to solve the disappearance of his beau. This film lacks the compelling central mystery that made that one gripping, focusing instead on Selah’s attempt to secure a successor before she goes off to college.

The film’s best scene – a stylish montage – has Selah explaining to another girl how she has come to exploit her womanhood in order to assert control, suggesting Poe’s thematic intent. Yet much of the drama is wrung from Selah’s reluctance to move on with the next stage of her life, triggering a power struggle with Shakespearean shades. Her authority will soon come to mean nothing, and so choosing a replacement – even when she finds a suitable candidate in intelligent, likeable Paloma (Celeste O’Connor) – is made agonising. Poe clearly understands how life at seventeen can come to feel like the be-all and end-all, imbuing the narrative with the weight and seriousness these kids have imposed upon themselves, though we know that life’s more difficult parts are still to come.

Poe has created an undeniably interesting world, like Wes Anderson with none of the humour. But her characters – all reduced to the same, flat acting style – are less compelling. Scenes are shot with an attractive, sun-kissed haze, but have a tendency to drag; the film flirts with tedium far too often and even at 97 minutes the idea seems overstretched – scenes extending well past their point of intrigue, especially in the last quarter. Selah eventually fizzles, prompting that most frustrating of filmic questions: Is that it?

It’s become common that we expect directorial debuts to reveal their makers as instant geniuses, their films as masterpieces. But this is true of so few filmmakers outside of Quentin Tarantino. Most directors arrive at greatness after they’re given the space to make a handful of films, honing their style, figuring out what works and what doesn’t. Maybe Selah and the Spades is better for what it promises than for what it is – and that’s perfectly okay.

Selah and the Spades is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.