Word: nola
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...introduce herself to the camera. It's not that she cares what people think of her, she says with a candid smile, but "enough is enough." Tired of being called a "freak" (in the Rick Jamesian sense), she'd like to set the record straight. Thus, the parade of Nola-experts--including father, ex-roommate, sexologist, and lovers--rolls out. She knows that their comments--for instance, "I was the best thing to happen to Nola Darling...I was the sculptor, and she was but a piece of clay"--will be her best defense...
...SMOOTH succession, Lee presents the three utterly different men pursuing Nola. First, the most sensitive, loving, and boring, is Jamie Overstreet (Tommy Redmond Hicks): "I believe that there is one person in this world that was meant to be your soulmate... For me, Nola Darling was that person." Hicks succeeds in making his character less of a chump than he might seem. Jamie plays the largest part in Nola's love life, and is especially useful as a foil for the other two men. After hearing a poem Jamie has composed for Nola, one competitor remarks "Aw, aw, that...
...nearly as playful and adventurous as a filmmaker as Mars is a character. He takes chances and willfully escapes from standard film conventions. Lee inserts a sequence that illustrates Nola's caustic commentary on men. Ten men deliver their most persuasive come-on lines for the camera. One winner, for instance, suggests "Hey baby, let's do the wild thing." The laughter of the audience tends to drown out some of the lines but Lee surely will have his timing down by his next project. Another small misstep comes with a fantasy dance sequence shot in color in the middle...
...GOTTA Have It follows in the noble independent film tradition that also includes Jim Jarmusch's Stranger Than Paradise. Like Stranger, the low budget heavily dictated the nature of the script, but it didn't dampen the spirit of the film. Filming in 11 days, with minimal sets (either Nola's boudoir or the streets of Brooklyn) and a small no-megastar cast, Lee made the most of what he had. And that includes a terribly talented family circle: his father, the esteemed jazz pianist/composer Bill Lee, furnished the splendid score as well as a nice cameo performance as father...
...Gotta Have It does, alas, bear some traces of its rushed production schedule and quick script-writing. Although every actor delivers the direct camera addresses with genuine skill and wit, dialogue can occasionally sound forced or recited. Several scenes seem contrived. Take, for example, the Thanksgiving dinner Nola sets up to introduce all the rivals on the theory that "you were all going to meet one day..." Of course, the results are disastrous and Nola should know better than to have expected civility on such an occasion. Still, Lee can be forgiven almost any such questionable twists of plot because...