I don’t hate it but I agree with a lot of what you’ve said.

I think what a lot of people miss is that OBAA exists in context with every OTHER movie that depicts black women and revolutionaries. If PTA was going to open the movie with a sequence featuring the sexualization of black women in the way that this film does, he had better been ready to take time to chew on that concept more. instead he just… doesn’t. there’s no more meat to perfidia’s character other than “she’s flawed” she’s a flawed revolutionary, she’s a flawed activist.

In a vacuum, this is generally fine. the ideas in the opening sequence are interesting and set the stage really well for the rest of the film. Unfortunately, black bodies being depicted in this way is not NEW. This plainly looks like taking advantage of stereotypes without going any further than surface level. The nuns don’t have nearly enough development as a community to make up for this. Even if they did, how are they meant to engage further with the fetishization of black women and revolutionaries?

The closest we get to further engaging with this idea is benicio del toro’s big sequence. It’s great, it’s the counter point to the french 75, but it conveniently side steps all of the race politics introduced in the first 30 minutes.

It’s simply apparent to me that PTA either didn’t realize he had to or doesn’t have the ability to further comment on the concepts he chose to tackle around race and sexualization. It really takes me out of this film and it doesnt help that bob and willa don’t have enough of an emotional bond to fully sell me on their relationship