Steve Leibson

The subject, a poor black woman growing up in the south in the 1960s and 1970s, is a worthy one. It was worthy of a better film than this one, which consists of myriad tiny slices in time that, like a box of jigsaw puzzle pieces, have been dropped on the floor and jumbled, then put together without regard to chronology. Flashbacks, flash forwards, and no sense of "now." The dialog is so sparse that it's of no help in reassembling these pieces into a coherent timeline without diverting your attention from the storytelling. Further, the cinematography seems to consist of only tight shots, so tight that character's bodies frequently appear without their heads or other body parts, forcing you to imagine who the character is and what that character might be doing. At times, I felt dizzy from the camera work. A mess. A real mess.