Tessa Thompson (left foreground)…campus troublemaker
“DEAR WHITE PEOPLE” My rating: C+ (Opens wide on Oct. 24)
100 minutes | MPAA rating: R
A post-racial America?
Not according to “Dear White People,” writer/director Justin Simien’s savage satire in which all the swirling crosscurrents of black/white interaction reach critical mass on a posh Ivy League campus.
The film begins with news reports about the furor created by a party at Winchester University. Revelers were invited to “free your inner Negro” by costuming themselves as black stereotypes and dining on friend chicken.
The story proper begins some months earlier and divides its time among several characters, most (but not all) of them African American.
Sam (Tessa Thompson) has a show called “Dear White People” on the campus radio station where she dishes humorous observations on race relations. One wag describes her as “like Spike Lee and Oprah had a pissed-off baby.”
Though she’s more performance artist than true activist, Sam finds herself running for president of one of Winchester’s “houses,” as the various dormitories are known.
Butler's Cinema Scene 