Gaptoothed and gorgeous, the title character of “Goldie” (played by the fashion model Slick Woods) wears a carpet of tangerine fuzz on her head and avocado sneakers on her ever-moving feet. Barely 18, Goldie doesn’t have much, but she does have dreams, chief among them to dance in an upcoming hip-hop video. A canary-yellow faux-fur coat she spies in a store window would be perfect for that performance, and — not incidentally — for the woman she fiercely wants to become. Whatever the cost, she’s gotta have it.
Colorful as a box of Skittles, “Goldie” (written and directed by the Dutch filmmaker Sam de Jong) turns its section of the Bronx into a world of pizza slices and hand-to-mouth cash deals. In part a commentary on how monetizing one’s image has become a viable economic lifeline, the movie constructs an obstacle course of hardships between Goldie and her aspirations. When her mother (Marsha Stephanie Blake) is arrested for unspecified reasons, Goldie, terrified that her two preteen half sisters will be put into care, grabs them up and takes to the streets.
But people on the margins rarely have rich friends, and the cash Goldie has swiped from her mother’s shifty, live-in boyfriend (Danny Hoch) won’t go very far. So for the next while, Goldie hustles the girls from one possible savior to another — a former teacher, a variety of sketchy acquaintances — while trying to sell her mother’s pain medication. With every put-down, her can-do energy ramps up; and as the three traverse the city’s streets, bounced along by Nathan Halpern’s encouraging score, de Jong outlines their bodies in neon-bright squiggles of color — protective shields against desperate circumstances.
This playfulness keeps the movie determinedly jaunty. (In one wonderful sequence, filmed like a game of Whac-a-Mole, Goldie dodges department-store security guards among crammed racks of clothing.) Yet its freeze frames and other tricks can dilute the drama and make the positivity feel forced. Woods, remarkably comfortable in her first film role, gives Goldie a steel spine and a feisty resourcefulness, her moments of vulnerability rare, but essential. When she glances directly at the camera — so fleetingly I wondered if I had imagined it — she seems to be implicating all of us in a system determined to grind her down.
Opening on a note of quirky vitality, “Goldie” fades out on a sigh of bittersweet ambivalence. Will the system win, or is Goldie learning to differentiate between achievable goals and wild fantasy? That citrus coat screams success, fame and the chance of a future for herself and her siblings. That’s a lot of hope to place in one piece of clothing.
Goldie
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 28 minutes.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
