Romance goes 'Beyond' the cliches
I am not normally a fan of movies that romanticize and glorify ethics-challenged, edgy sexual relationships between professional protectors and the very people they've been hired to professionally protect.
We have subsets of the genre that include shrinks who fall for their patients, journalists who snuggle up with their sources, and teachers who offer one-on-one sessions with their students.
But the most popular one seems to be the bodyguard who does more with someone's body than guard it.
"Someone to Watch Over Me" and "The Bodyguard" lead the list, and now it's joined by "Beyond the Lights," which turns out to be a heady surprise: an engaging and sincere romance with a more noble purpose.
Gina Prince-Bythewood, mostly known for directing and writing the solid sports romance "Love and Basketball," creates "Beyond the Lights" as a music-infused, humanistic experience, in the best sense of the phrase.
It tells the story of a man with everything but fame and fortune who falls for a woman with nothing but fame and fortune.
Although the man has been hired to be her bodyguard, he winds up protecting much more: her soul. He saves her, but only in the sense that he throws her a metaphorical life preserver. She must decide to use it or not.
We witness black 10-year-old Noni (India Jean-Jacques) at a talent contest where her soulful a cappella song nabs second place. Insulted, her white single mother Macy Jean (Minnie Driver) flies into a rage and forces the girl to throw away her trophy.
"You want to be a runner up?" she screeches, "or do you want to be a winner?" We can tell her priorities.
Years later, Noni (now played by the charismatic and achingly vulnerable Gugu Mbatha-Raw) has become a showbiz superstar, a bouncing Beyoncé with limos, commercials, concerts, fans and a publicized romance with white-hot rapper Kid Culprit (Colson "MGK" Baker).
She has everything her mother could want.
One night, Noni, drugged, depressed and devoid of spirit, goes out on the balcony of her high-rise hotel room.
Why not? Why not ... jump?
An L.A. cop named Kaz (Nate Parker), who by luck (or fate?) drew celebrity guard duty that night, talks her off the ledge and becomes a reluctant hero in the press after Macy Jean downplays that Noni tried to commit suicide.
The rest of "Beyond the Lights" sounds like yawner romantic fodder about parents vicariously living through their kids. But it's more.
Macy Jean can't let Noni be distracted by a nobody who can't promote her career, the one only Mom really wants.
Kaz's cop dad Captain Nicol (Danny Glover) doesn't want his handsome son to screw up their plan for him to springboard from law enforcement into politics. Dating a Britney Spears won't cut it.
Yes, we've seen this movie before, but not as well-played or as smartly written.
To that point, Kaz doesn't exactly become Noni's savior, but enables her to see a better way that she can go there if she really wants to. She does.
"Congratulations!" Macy Jean snarls when her daughter falls for the cop, "You're a bloody cliché!"
Yes, she is, and Prince-Bythewood wants us to know she knows it.
Because "Beyond the Lights" goes beyond the clichés with a romance that springs from the human obligation to help those in need.
Some need food. Some need clothes. Some need shelter. Some, like Noni, need validation, love, and a purpose. And others, like Kaz, find their purpose in helping others find theirs.
“Beyond the Lights”
★ ★ ★
Starring: Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Nate Parker, Minnie Driver, Danny Glover
Directed by: Gina Prince-Bythewood
Other: A Relativity Media release. Rated PG-13 for language, partial nudity, suggestive gestures. 102 minutes