Medicine for Melancholy

Barry Jenkins’s captivating debut feature, Medicine for Melancholy, is a lo-fi romance that unfolds against the backdrop of a rapidly gentrifying San Francisco. There, a one-night stand between two young bohemians, Micah (Wyatt Cenac) and Jo’ (Tracey Heggins), spins off into a woozy daylong affair marked by moments of tenderness, friction, joy, and intellectual sparring as they explore their relationships to each other, the city, and their own Blackness. Shooting on desaturated video, Jenkins crafts an intimate exploration of alienation and connection graced with the evocative visual palette and empathetic emotional charge that have come to define his work.