Directed By Women: We Grown Now (2023)

They say it takes a village to raise a child, but it takes that and more to get them the hell out of poverty.

Much like “The Florida Project,” there’s a certain lightness in the fact that we are seeing an impoverished setting through the eyes of a child, even if things are a lot less grim in Minhal Baig’s “We Grown Now.” Nostalgia can be a convenient cover, and unlike the transient nature of the budget hotel in “The Florida Project,” there’s a retro setting of 1992, and the fact that the community which very much existed in the Cabrini-Green public housing complex no longer does.

But that kind of purging is unimaginable as the film begins, especially to the ten-year-old besties Malik (Blake Cameron James) and Eric (Gian Knight Ramirez) as they simply live their lives and find the fun and joy that kids tend to do, at least before the pubescent angst kicks in.

Malik is the one who quickly emerges as the film’s star and central character, and it’s pretty clear he’s going to be a force to be reckoned with one way or another. He’s being raised in a household of women, which consists of his grandmother Anita (S. Epatha Merkerson), older sister Amber, and his mother Dolores (Jurnee Smollett). Malik moves among them with ease, effortlessly charming them all into fits of laughter, a sign of potential danger to come if there ever was one IMO.

This trio is far more likely to influence Malik for the better the way they also effortlessly impart their history and the ability to see beyond their immediate surroundings. Much like Detroit, Cabrini-Green has long been a symbol of decline, a setting for much of the ills plaguing American society. You know the drill: drugs, poverty, the breaking down of the family, all segregated in a fashion which would allow whiteness to dismiss a place and the people in it.

Minhal Baig, who also wrote the film, likewise hails from Chicago, having grown up in Rogers Park to Pakistani parents, a far cry from the setting she tenderly chronicles here. For “We Grown Now,” Baig conducted multiple interviews with former residents of Cabrini-Green’s high-rise apartments, and she clearly got a great deal of personal connection out of it in the way the film warmly depicts Malik’s residence as more than a living space.

It’s clearly a home, with pictures on the wall, the beauty of the mundane which makes use of lighting and a haunting score in a fashion will inevitably draw comparisons to “Moonlight.” “We Grown Now” certainly has its own link to the American South, with Anita’s stories of life in Tupelo Mississippi, which has a kind of living talisman in the sewing machine she brought north with her, as well as the belief she imparts to her family about seeing the poetry in everything.

So it feels like a violation when a tragedy rocks the neighborhood and the powers that be decide to do all the wrong things about it, bringing in the police to invade the neighborhood and homes to such a degree that they feel like an occupying force. Malik and Eric can scream that they exist at the top of their lungs, they can play hooky and experience more of what Chicago has to offer, such as the Art Institute, but Malik’s mother Dolores also has the clear-eyed vision of a woman who can see some of what her neighborhood is going to come to. And the family has saved up just enough to allow her to take an opportunity to better their lives by her taking a job and new home in the suburbs.

If “We Grown Now” was from her perspective, this would likely feel more akin to a gentle rebirth, but Malik mainly feels the pain of the impending separation from his friend Eric, whose lack of maternal presence in his own home where he lives with his sister and single father Jason (Lil Rel Howery) feels like being stripped of his ability to dream. We mourn with them too, as Malik and his family leave a place that always was far more than its worst aspects.

What is home, or any place really, but the people? Even if Malik and his family made the most of an opportunity just in time, “We Grown Now” allows us to see the bittersweet nature of making a new home and better life, especially when it means leaving behind a community that seemed as if nothing on Earth could match it for its resiliency. Until of course, forces beyond their control did.

52 Films By Women: Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. (1992)

IMDB

By Andrea Thompson

Damn straight this is a film Hollywood dare not do. Many films make similar claims to edginess, but the 1992 offering “Just Another Girl on the I.R.T.” earns it, simply for immersing itself so fully in the mindset and world of 17-year-old Chantel (Ariyan A. Johnson). Movies about Black people coping with marginalization, most of which soon came to be known as “hood” or “ghetto” movies, had already become a thing, what with the success of “Juice” and especially “Boyz in the Hood.” But those films, and pretty much most of the others, were all about the men, and “Just Another Girl” has an unapologetically feminine perspective, from Chantel and her friends graphically (and stupidly) discussing sex to casually mentioning their periods.

We learn a few things about Chantel right away, mostly that she's a smart, driven teenager who lives in Brooklyn during a time when that meant something different. This is the 90s, so people are using tokens on the subway (the I.R.T. of the title refers to a New York subway line) and dealing with what looks like the earliest stages of gentrification. Chantel also gets good grades, and is trying to graduate early so she can go to college and become a doctor. She confidently speaks her mind, asking why the struggles of Black people today aren't addressed, and takes pride in talking tough when pushed.

IMDB

Chantel also constantly breaks the fourth wall as she speaks directly to us of her determination to be different than everyone around her, from her classmates who are constantly failing, dropping out, or getting pregnant, to her own parents. They clearly love each other and their children, but the stress of living paycheck to paycheck, coupled with the lack of opportunities and their opposing work schedules, shows in vicious arguments which occasionally arise. “That's not gonna be me,” Chantel tells us. “Just Another Girl on the I.R.T.” makes a good case for her momentum. Chantel is smart, and she has the grades to graduate early and head to college.

She's also dangerously ignorant the way 17-year-olds generally are. She may be intelligent and confident enough to call out the injustice she sees and excel in school, but her lack of experience also leads her to make the same mistakes many other kids her age do. Faster than you can say you dumb kid, she's ditching her boyfriend and her friends to hang out with the smooth-talking Tyrone (Kevin Thigpen) and having unprotected sex with him. When she vomits in the bathroom shortly after, she's too smart not to know what it means, but she still can't bring herself to make a decision. Deciding she has better things to do, Chantel carries on as usual and employs various tricks to hide her pregnancy.

As for Ty, although he initially reacts angrily when Chantel tells him the news, he does try to help. He wants her to have an abortion, but he never tries to force her to do anything. It is Chantel who screws things up even further by using the money he gives her to go on a shopping spree with her friend. He has every right to be angry with her, because Chantel also never asks for help, probably because she doesn't know how. She's so invested in keeping up a tough front that she doesn't know how to be vulnerable. When she goes into a very graphic, bloody labor at Ty's place, his concern is for her. Chantel is the one who persuades him to take a horrific step to ensure her future, and he undoes the deed far before she regrets her request and tries to do the right thing.

IMDB

Director Leslie Harris not only shot the film on a shoestring budget of $130,00 in 17 days, she ran out of money during the editing process, partly because she refused to give in to pressure by studio execs to make Ty a drug dealer. After generous donations from author Terry McMillan and documentary filmmaker Michael Moore, “Just Another Girl” went on to win the Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. If there were any justice in the world, Harris would've gone on to have a prolific career, but she hasn't made another feature film since. “Just Another Girl” seems to be enjoying a kind of rediscovery in recent years, and Chantel herself remains a heroine who refuses to be pigeonholed, even if many reviewers tried to dismiss her as merely a younger version of the stereotypical angry black woman. Her pregnancy compromises the future she envisioned for herself, but it by no means ends it. Young Black women coming of age on-screen also seem to be less and less rare, with films like “Akeelah and the Bee,” “Pariah,” “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” “Precious,” “If Beale Street Could Talk,” and “Jezebel.” Yet for some, Chantel will always be the first heroine where they were able to see themselves.