There's a rich, well-realized family dramedy already going on in American Fiction before the movie even gets to its central satirical set-up, the selling point that's been highlighted in trailers and advertisements. Perhaps the biggest stumbling block for writer/director Cord Jefferson's debut film is that the high-concept satire is never quite as compelling as the more grounded interpersonal drama, although it provides the movie's biggest laughs. Still, both elements are largely successful, and both are carried by star Jeffrey Wright making the most of his rare opportunity to play a leading role.
Wright plays Thelonious "Monk" Ellison, a morose English professor at an unnamed college in Los Angeles, where his antagonistic attitude toward students gets him placed on an involuntary leave of absence. Monk is also a novelist, but his highbrow books aren't exactly bestsellers, and his agent Arthur (John Ortiz) can't even find a publisher for his latest work. As Arthur explains, mainstream publishers expect Black authors like Monk to write novels like the ultra-popular debut from young writer Sintara Golden (Issa Rae), a Precious-style saga of poverty and violence steeped in stereotypes.
Monk travels to his hometown of Boston for a book festival, where he's disgusted by the rapturous reception Sintara gets from a mostly white audience. Initially, though, he's more focused on reuniting with his dysfunctional family, including his two doctor siblings and his mother Agnes, (Leslie Uggams), who's just been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.
American Fiction is funny and affecting on its own as a small-scale story about a middle-aged malcontent coming to terms with a life of dissatisfaction and trying to build stronger relationships for the future. It would be just as rewarding if Monk's anger over the state of Black literature remained a background element, rather than eventually driving the story. Even so, Jefferson never loses sight of the layered family dynamic once Monk launches a scheme that threatens to take over his entire life and career.
That scheme is Monk's effort to write his own novel in the mode expected of Black novelists, which he sends to Arthur as a joke, a tool to embarrass the white publishers who've ignored him. Instead, it lands him the biggest payday of his career, and soon the fictitious persona he's crafted for the novel's author becomes a media sensation. American Fiction is based on Percival Everett's 2001 novel Erasure, and thus some of its satire may seem a little obvious now, but Jefferson handles it deftly, rarely overplaying the cringe comedy and effectively making points that remain incisive 20-plus years after Everett first wrote them.
Along with the movie, Monk switches back and forth between the craziness of his sudden success and the mundane drama of his daily life, including conflicts with his estranged, occasionally obnoxious brother Cliff (Sterling K. Brown) and a burgeoning romance with his kind, patient neighbor Coraline (Erika Alexander). The other characters in the publishing-industry storyline are as cartoonish as Monk's invented alter ego, but Brown, Alexander and Uggams give sensitive, layered performances as the people who actually matter in Monk's life.
Jefferson doesn't always get the balance right, especially in a smugly self-referential ending that feels more like a cop-out. Mostly, though, American Fiction offers the kind of nuanced portrayal of Black life that Monk himself would embrace, with a prickly, sometimes unlikable protagonist who doesn't fit into stereotypes but also can't escape the way the outside world perceives him. His method of asserting his individuality may lead to disaster, but at least it's uniquely his own story. ♦
AMERICAN FICTION