Review: Pretty Red Dress

Director:  Dionne Edwards

Stars:  Natey Jones, Alexandra Burke, Temilola Olatunbosun

Pretty Red Dress begins and ends with a man being released from prison. Following a rollicking R’n’B number that doubles as an opening credit sequence, we first meet Travis (Natey Jones), a South Londoner newly released from incarceration. Returning to his girlfriend Candice (Alexandra Burke) and daughter Kenisha (Temilola Olatunbosun), the opening portion of the film studies his acclimatisation to the outside world, while also setting up a series of questions about the perception of masculinity in contemporary Black families and neighbourhoods in Britain.

Making her feature debut from her own script, Dionne Edwards wastes little time setting up her lines of inquiry. Intimate (but not overtly explicit) scenes between the reunited lovers establish a submissive attitude in Travis, with Candice quickly reverting to an evidently longstanding role in their intimacy. Half-serious jibes about Travis’ masculinity litter the dialogue between them.

When Candice finds herself in the running for the lead role in a musical about the life of Tina Turner, a newly-acquired red dress becomes a point of contention within the family unit. Travis has a closeted desire to wear women’s clothes and make-up, and when left to his own devices in the family home, struggles to resist the allure of the titular item. Sadly, he seems to always time his indulgences to coincide with someone arriving home. First Kenisha catches him wearing her mother’s lipstick, then Candice walks in on him in full regalia. Travis tries to laugh off the incident as a prank and a one-off, but nobody’s convinced.

Running parallel to this, Kenisha finds herself plotting her own course through self-discovery, becoming closer with a fellow girl at school. Edwards goes for the quick route to kitchen sink drama and makes Candice the point of contention within the family. Tending toward traditional values, she struggles to react calmly to either burgeoning situation, sending both her partner and daughter into their own separate tailspins.

There are various outside pressures documented also. For Kenisha it’s the mocking of her peers on the playground. While Edwards establishes a gang culture in the surrounding neighbourhood that traps Travis and his desire to be pretty firmly within the family’s small council estate flat.

If Edwards’ sources of tension are predictable, they are also true to life. Still, Candice’s intolerance feels like the easiest route to time-filling scenes of drama, and these are among the least remarkable that occur. While played with soap opera efficiency, there’s little that’s revelatory among them. Burke – in her first major film role – acquits herself well enough, but the film is stronger when focusing in on Travis’ interior life, and the relationship he has with his daughter. Recognising that they are both ‘off key’ engenders a sense of camaraderie between the two, and the interplay that occurs here becomes one of the movie’s greatest joys.

If there’s a revelation to be found, it is Natey Jones’ take on Edwards’ character, which is sensitive, vulnerable but also fraught and physical. When chided by his more successful, younger brother, Travis visibly reverts to their adolescent dynamic. Jones makes him appear caged, overwhelmed. In moments alone with Travis we sense him finally at ease, off-guard. Jones tempers the differences between these moments well. In a film that sometimes lacks for subtlety, Jones often provides a valuable pivot back to the real. The same can also be said of the young Olatunbosun, whose Kanisha feels completely genuinely, even if the dialogue (very occasionally) rings a little clumsily.

This is a well-mounted and empathic kitchen-sink drama, one that acknowledges that there is still some way to go in the nooks of working class Britain to counter long-instilled prejudices around gender and sexuality. If Edwards seems a little gun-shy in her approach to tone, there’s still plenty of assured work proffered forward here, as well as a welcome insight into this community of Jamaican heritage, even if those connections aren’t Edwards’ main focus.