In the writer-director Nana Mensah’s amusing and astute feature debut, a death forces a reckoning for a brainy young Ghanaian-American living in both worlds.
Molecular neuro-oncologist Sarah Obeng is very smart. But in the subtle delight “Queen of Glory” — written and directed by its lead actor, Nana Mensah — the American daughter of Ghanaian parents can be foolish, too. Take her married boyfriend and university colleague, Lyle (Adam Leon): He’s simply not worthy.
Sarah is organizing their relocation to his next job when she learns of her mother’s death. Now she must decamp from Manhattan’s Upper West Side to the Bronx to plan her mother’s funeral, deal with her father (Oberon K.A. Adjepong) and decide what to do with her mother’s home, her Christian bookstore and the store’s grateful employee, Pitt (Meeko Gattuso). Pitt especially gladdens as the former inmate with the face tattoos and creative side gig.
The child of Ghanaian parents herself, Mensah traverses the polyglot turf well, infusing details with astute affection and understated laughs. Even the occasional slapstick proves more sweet than silly.
Sarah’s return to the neighborhood of immigrant melding and cultural adjacency stirsher feelings of being an outsider but at the same time awakens her sense of community. Mensah pokes gentle fun at her heroine and treats the failings of some of the menfolk here with deadpan wit and little rancor.
Ghanaian drums and dance set a sonic and visual motif that recurs, at once disruption and glue. With so much to do, Sarah has had little time for grief. When her reality, the drumming and the movie’s archival images of African gatherings finally converge, a mother, a motherland and a daughter get their emotional due.
Queen of Glory
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 18 minutes. In theaters.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
