The conflict between second-generation immigrants, adapted to the new country, and their not-fully-transplanted parents has long been a key theme in US culture. It is revisited delightfully in this debut feature set among the Ghanaian community of New York City. Clocking in at a lean 78 minutes, Queen of Glory is a little short on plot. We bounce from one adventure to another without settling into anything like a rhythm. But the nuanced acting and characterisation elevate a film that feels securely connected to a particular place and time. The Bronx has rarely been so affectionately evoked.
Nana Mensah directs herself as Sarah, a PhD student in oncology at Columbia University. Despite her apparent success, she plans to move to Ohio to be with her boyfriend, but finds that plan scuppered when her mother dies and she inherits her house and the Christian bookstore that gives the film its title. As is often the case with such stories, Mensah finds her liberal urban values in conflict with the more conservative traditions of the previous generation. For the most part, Mensah’s script plays these tensions out through sharp comedy. An aunt asks Sarah why she hasn’t settled down with a good man. “I am a scientist,” she wearily explains. “So you know how babies are made,” comes the retort. Relations with her father are considerably more flinty.
Mensah does good work in the creation of a permanently exasperated professional assailed on all sides by every sort of antagonist. Nothing in her secular life has prepared her for the bookshop or for remaining employee Pitt (Meeko Gattuso), an aggressively tattooed ex-con with a commitment to the Christian ethos. Yet, for all her sighs and the world’s inconveniences, we remain aware that, with her plans to abandon Columbia for a potentially unsuitable match, she may also be an enemy to herself. It is a nuanced, funny, sincere performance in a film with no duff turns.
It hardly needs to be said that Sarah is drifting towards an accommodation with her Ghanaian heritage. The path is prepared by occasional cuts to footage of life in the home country, but that ultimate succumbing is, nonetheless, just a little but too sudden. A lovely final shot somewhat alleviates the jolt.
A small film that points promisingly towards greater things.
