Steve McQueen's ravishing Lovers Rock summons a potent sense of a community gathering that caresses and cocoons those present, shutting out the hostilities of the city outside.
The second movie to premiere at the New York Film Festival from the director's Small Axe anthology for Amazon and BBC, Mangrove, which is set a decade earlier, in 1968-70, shows how another regular gathering place for the same immigrant community provides a cherished home away from home.
The difference here is that its very existence represents a threatening statement of resistance to the white establishment. "The thing about the Black man is he's gotta know his place," says police constable Pulley (Sam Spruell) as he eyes the opening-night celebrations of the.
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