Spike Lee's heated discussion of interracial romance is engaging enough on the level of a TV talk show (a girl-talk session of black women itemizing the shortcomings of black men could be transplanted bodily to The Oprah Winfrey Show), but not on the level of fiction. The most glaring problem with it in the latter arena is that the central relationship -- between a married black architect and his Italian "temp" -- is so unspecific that it merely opens the topic rather than actually goes into it. It never steps down from the realm of the abstract. Lee was, nevertheless, shrewd enough or lucky enough to have avoided the blandest and blondest possible emissary of whiteness and instead to have enlisted an actress (Annabella Sciorra) who would all on her own bring in a modicum of individuality and humanity and ethnicity. The last of these attributes gives Lee an unlimited opportunity to pay homage to Martin Scorsese as a mentor ("Fuck me? Fuck you!"). In that and related pursuits, however, he expends so much energy just setting up the social context of the discussion, laying down the premises for it, filling in the background to it, that he has none left over for the case in point. With Wesley Snipes, John Turturro, Lonette McKee, and Lee. (1991) — Duncan Shepherd
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