Spike Lee’s first feature focuses on Nola Darling (Tracy Camilla Johns), a young black New Yorker who is not ashamed of her reputation as a good-time girl. She attempts to sort out the three steady men in her life with a view (maybe) to marriage and each lover, convinced that he is the solution to Nola’s problem, makes his prospective pitch in a series of painfully funny character vignettes. The action centres on Nola’s spacious Brooklyn studio, where the men take it in turns to assassinate each other’s characters before gathering around Nola’s Thanksgiving table to do it face-to face. The film remains the most good-natured and funniest of all Lee’s features.

U.S.A., 1986.
Black and white.
85 mins.