The Watermelon Woman (1997)
TOMATOMETER
AUDIENCE SCORE
Critic Consensus: An auspicious debut for writer-director Cheryl Dunye, The Watermelon Woman tells a fresh story in wittily irreverent style.
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Movie Info
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Cast
as Cheryl
as Tamara
as Diana
as Tamara
as Fae Richards/The Watermelon Woman
as Herself
as Lee
as Mrs. Dunye
as Shirley
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Critic Reviews for The Watermelon Woman
All Critics (53) | Top Critics (24) | Fresh (48) | Rotten (5)
The Watermelon Woman is quite smart, remarkably sophisticated filmmaking for a first-time director.
It gives us something we don't see much of in film -- young black women claiming their space and sharing it with the rest of us.
It also turns out to be quite likeable, helped by a disarming refusal to take itself or its milieu too seriously.
Sadly, it intrigues only through its inventive manipulation of documentary techniques -- which is to say that what the form promises, the content falls far short of delivering.
It could have become a deadly earnest exercise. But Dunye combats didacticism with wit and irreverence (Camille Paglia even has a self-parodying cameo).
Dunye's salvation is her sense of humor. She's good at creating light, bantering dialogue, and there are a couple of sharp, satirical scenes.
Audience Reviews for The Watermelon Woman
Even though "The Watermelon Woman" is quite unpolished, writer-director Cheryl Dunye still manages to create a realistic fictional history in it to explore themes of race and sexuality while paralleling that with a fictional present where she plays Cheryl who works at a video store with her pal Tamara(Valarie Walker) and as videographers. Tamara tries to set her up on a blind date at a karaoke bar but it goes disastrously wrong.(Surprisingly, even worse than the usual karaoke nightmare.) Unexpectedly, Cheryl finds herself attracted to Diana(Guinevere Turner) who is new to Philadelphia. Cheryl also has dreams of becoming a filmmaker and has decided to focus on The Watermelon Woman(Lisa Marie Bronson), nee Fae Richards, who was featured in Hollywood films as a stereotypical black maid and more three dimensional roles in race films. What Dunye does well is give a tantalizing glimpse at a lost world while debating whether or not actors like Fae were positive or negative role models. Adding versimilitude to the proceedings are interviews with Dunye's mother and Camille Paglia, about whom the reality of is debatable. For example, what does a watermelon having the same colors as the Italian flag have to do with anything?
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