A Review of Selah and the Spades – Top

Amazon Studios’ Selah and the Spades is director/writer Tayarisha Poe’s directorial debut, and what a confident turn she has delivered on her first film. The film follows Selah (Lovie Simone), leader of the Spades, one of the five factions in Haldwell, an elite Pennsylvania boarding school. The Spades deal with the most conventional of vices, meaning alcohol and drugs of your choice. The factions all have to work together so that their various activities aren’t found out by the powers that be (i.e the school).

There is a romanticism to the visuals of all these unsanctioned party scenes, where there is a sense of freedom as the youthful bodies writhe together, in contrast to the rigidity expected of them. Poe’s film doesn’t condemn but understands the teenager’s need to let loose, offering them spaces to indulge in their youthful vices, in turn asking us not to judge them for their various transgressions – which helps set the tone in our dealings with Selah.

It’s Selah’s senior year, which means she needs to start thinking about who to pass the torch to, as well as deal with her future college plans. There is much irony here, for Selah, who runs the Spades like a well-oiled machine, doesn’t have any agency over her own life. This is seen through constant incoming phone calls from her mother, who questions her sternly about her grades and dictates where she should go to college. Her mother feels she needs to rescue Selah from herself, hinting to the viewer something about Selah’s poisonous nature before we even see evidence of it.

Selah’s inability to play nice with others and incessant need to dominate then makes sense, but doesn’t excuse her bad behaviour. There is even a scene in the movie where Selah explains the lack of agency a young girl has over her body during a photoshoot, and while the monologue is a little too on the nose with its message, the visuals of the cheerleaders as they move through one dynamic movement after the other is a hypnotic choice. This is a constant demonstration of Poe’s style; she always goes for movement and refuses any static imagery. This allows the contrast to be noted for the moments where Selah is by herself, which feels slower and more contemplative.

When her right hand Maxxie (Jharrel Jerome) gets distracted from his duties after getting a girlfriend, we see the true breadth of Selah’s possessiveness and obsession about the need for control. Whoever doesn’t toe the line of doing things her way will have to grapple with her wrath, which is no pretty thing. Selah takes on a protégée, sophomore Paloma (Celeste O’Connor), whom she meets during the photoshoot, a young girl who is clearly in awe of her.

Paloma is an outsider in school, so when Selah welcomes her into the world of the Spades, she is eager to take up the offer; she even begins to thrive, as noted by the leaders of the other factions. Paloma’s true test comes along when she has to rough up a student who was involved in a scheme to destabilise Selah, and Poe symbolically layers this scene with a myriad of red ropes dangling from the ceiling, surrounding Selah and Paloma as they go toe to toe with what needs to be done.

When Paloma expresses the desire to do things differently after she takes over from Selah, this becomes the straw that breaks the camel’s back. To Selah, saying that you want to do things differently is basically an affront to how she runs things, and as we have seen from what happened with Maxxie, Selah cannot handle when things slip from her control. The outcome is horrific, for as much as Selah gripes about the lack of control a young girl has over her own body, Selah herself has stripped the agency of other girls, believing them to be in need of a lesson in humility, when it is Selah herself who needs that lesson.

While Selah is a morally complicated protagonist, whose actions you will not completely be on board with, there is some definite sympathy to be had for her. When the future is uncertain and so outside of one’s control, we can understand how imperative it becomes to hold on to any form of control, even if it comes with a measure of ugliness.