Superheroes, mother-daughter stories, and Gugu Mbatha-Raw, all directed by a female director? Fast Color has literally everything I could ask for from a superhero/sci-fi film.
Mbatha-Raw plays Ruth, a woman who’s been on the run for years after her superpowers were revealed. Now, with nowhere left to go, she returns to the farmhouse where she grew up, and finds her mother and the daughter she left behind. The film, which premiered at SXSW last year, will be released on March 29. Entertainment Weekly released an exclusive trailer, and I am in love.
Mbatha-Raw is no stranger to sci-fi, having been the best part of the somewhat disjointed The Cloverfield Paradox. The script looks far better here, and the film currently sits at 89% on Rotten Tomatoes with 18 reviews. Critics are praising not only the performances—Mbatha-Raw is joined by Lorraine Toussaint and newcomer Saniyya Sidney—but the power of the story, which works as an allegory and an origin story. Critic Rafael Motamayor from Flickering Myth even says the film gives us a look into “a new age of superhero films, where powers are used to compliment simple but powerful human stories.”
Julia Hart, the director, also co-wrote the film with her husband, producer Jordan Horowitz (one of the producers behind La La Land). Hart told EW of the film,
“My husband and I came up with the idea for the movie when we became parents. I just felt this superhuman strength that I had never felt before when I became a mother. So, the idea for the movie came from this notion that mothers are superheroes. I realized that I’d never seen a movie where there was actually a superhero who was a mother. That was the origin of it, about these three generations of women—a grandmother, a mother, and a daughter—using their relationship with each other to understand, and accept, and use their powers.”
Hart saw Mbatha-Raw in Beyond the Lights in 2014 and instantly knew she was who she wanted for her lead role. “In casting Gugu, Saniyya, and Lorraine,” Hart said at the SXSW Q&A, “[Fast Color] became about something much bigger than me, which is about women of color. It was a privilege for me as a white woman to step back and allow these incredible actresses to tell their story through a story we had started, but which became much bigger than us.”
The film is striking in the visuals and the teases of dialogue we get in the trailer, which is poetic without treading too much towards the vein of parody. There is something unique about a superhero film that not only focuses on a Black woman, but on three generations of Black women; most generational sagas focus on the male line and usually center on white families.
This is a fresh, unique story, and one that looks beyond exciting to watch. Hart’s direction looks flawless, as well, and I cannot wait to champion her future work. Check out the trailer below or on Entertainment Weekly.
(via Entertainment Weekly, image: Codeblack/Lionsgate)
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