Beauty review: Netflix’s faux Whitney Houston movie misses its key beats

Netflix’s movie Beauty isn’t a Whitney Houston biopic — at least, not officially. Chi creator Lena Waithe changed all the familiar names in Houston’s life to allegorical signifiers for this story about a young, Black, queer Gospel singer waiting on her ascension to stardom. The word “queer” is particularly important here, and it’s probably the primary reason this film follows the chronological events of Houston’s early life but doesn’t have her family’s backing or include her songs.

Andrew Dosunmu, director of the company, is certainly facing challenges in these circumstancesMother of George). However, it must also allow plenty of liberty. Filmmakers who aren’t beholden to pleasing the estate of music’s biggest female pop star should have carte blanche to take risks. Unfortunately, Waithe and Dosunmu don’t throw caution to the wind. Beauty, in their eyes, is a soporific, stoic story that floats along shallow narrative waters.

Dosunmu, for most of the film plays a visual game with chicken. Beauty (Gracie Marie Bradley), who is unable to speak, stands in the first scene at a microphone in a studio. While she’s frozen there, her mind leaps back in time, through a montage that sees her at church, at a gay club, and lying romantically in the arms of Jasmine (Aleyse Shannon). Dosunmu calls that Beauty shot in the studio his home. It’s the end point of her journey. In the rest of this movie, she reminisces about her journey through flashbacks and a beautiful, vintage patina that reflects how it happened.

A deeply religious and fractured family can produce beauty. Cain (Micheal) Ward and Abel (Kyle Bary), her brothers, embody pure rage as well as good. She is the daughter of a prominent Gospel singer, Niecy Nah (a version Cissy Houston), who has never reached the fame she desired. Although Giancarlo Esposito, her father, acts like a star, with his gold jewelry and long, curled hair, he has a fierce temper.

Beauty’s parents treat her as their golden child, with a voice touched by God. But they’re both deeply jealous of their children. Her mother believes herself far more talented than Beauty, and she’s suspicious about the girl’s chances for stardom. The mother’s unspoken question seems to be If I couldn’t make it, why should my daughter? Beauty’s father thought he was destined for greatness, too. Now he’s old, with handsome sons he resents and a daughter who represents his last chance at a big payday.

Waithe’s script doesn’t paint these characters beyond their most basic personal weaknesses. Nash and Esposito handle the fill-in work themselves, imbuing the people they’re playing with richer interior lives than what’s on paper. They walk with big, broad movements, and project a sense that they know more than they’re letting on.

Audiences arriving to this inspired-by-real-life story hoping for big musical numbers will leave sorely disappointed. Beauty wants to be an iconic figure. Each day she sees gospel icons like Mahalia and The Clark Sisters strut their stuff on TV. Cinematographer Benoît Delhomme (At Eternity’s Gate) captures Beauty’s awe through fourth wall-breaking portraits dipped in dreamlike blue lighting.

Dosunmu’s clever move to use footage from these legendary singers was to infuse some music into a film without Beauty singing. Seriously, she doesn’t utter a single note. Beauty performs in a later scene. However, viewers are placed on the wrong side the soundproof glasses, so they can’t hear any. It’s a cheeky decision. But Dosunmu’s sleight of hand begins to wear thin once it becomes apparent that there’s no payoff for this withholding; not only are there no Houston songs, there are no original ones meant to communicate Beauty’s talents, either.

Image by Netflix

It might not be worth it to travel all the way from Houston for the film, especially if you get the opportunity to experience a querrelative romance. However, the movie isn’t openly romantic. This is ultimately the story of Beauty and Jasmine (a facsimile of Houston’s longtime lover, Robyn Crawford), and how conforming to religion and stardom crushed their relationship. Beauty’s manager (Sharon Stone) wants to make Beauty more mainstream (translation: fit for white audiences), and suggests that not only should she wear a long, curly wig and perform standards like “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” for Irv Merlin Show (an allusion to Houston singing “Home” from The WizOn Merv Griffin Show), she’d prefer that Beauty and Jasmine kept their relationship private. Jasmine is initially a strong supporter of Beauty. But, gradually, Beauty gives in to pressure.

Two women slow dance in their intimate moments. Jasmine is comforted by Beauty in hospital. They lie in each other’s arms at Beauty’s home. They never kissed, except for a few loving pecks on each cheek. To a point, there’s an appealing tension in their on-screen abstinence, in the way they always come close to fully physically committing themselves to each other. But Dosunmu doesn’t let their relationship evolve much. The will-they-or-won’t-they schema only works when viewers feel like on-screen stress is building toward some cathartic release. The movie does not allow that to happen.

It could feel more deliberate and bold than just an incoherent failure to get somewhere. Why opt to tell this story, then blunt the characters’ sensuality? When Sammy (Joey Bada$$ as a version of Bobby Brown) does appear, foreshadowing the end of Beauty and Jasmine’s time together, it’s difficult to feel engaged with the love that’s being lost, since Dosunmu has spent the entire movie holding it at arm’s length.

Beauty is an odd picture: a Whitney Houston biopic that can’t be a Whitney Houston biopic, leaving behind the songs and well-known names so it can tell a story that it ultimately doesn’t tell, except in bits and pieces. Waithe’s shallow writing uses such simplistic tricks that some of the dialogue sounds like it was written for her voice, not her characters. It isn’t entirely clear whose autobiography we’re seeing: Houston’s or Waithe’s? (And not in the good, personalized way, where the writer’s closeness to her subject lets her connect empathetically.) This draft reads more like a first draft. Still, Beauty proves again why Dosunmu is such a visually affecting director, even when he’s strapped with a bad script.

BeautyNetflix streaming available now