Jungle Fever

The next film in my Spike Lee film festival is Jungle Fever, which I did see when it was released in 1991. I hadn't seen it again until recently, and I was impressed with Lee's level of maturity and his being unafraid of tackling a controversial subject: interracial relationships. But the film is also hamstrung by occasional over-direction. Still, it's a notable film if only because it introduced most of the film-going world to Samuel L. Jackson.

Wesley Snipes stars what used to be called a "buppie," an upper-middle class black man. He's an architect who lives in Harlem with his wife, Lonetta McKee, and a young daughter. He works for a firm owned and dominated by white people, and objects when they hire a white temp for him (Annabella Sciorra). But one late night over Chinese food they have sex right on his drafting table, and start an affair.

Both are treading in dangerous waters, and when the affair is discovered major shit hits the fan. McKee throws Snipes out, and is even more outraged by the fact that he is having sex with a white woman. Sciorra, the daughter in a traditional Italian home in Bensonhurst, is beaten by her father and thrown out. They both have understanding friends (Lee plays Snipes' buddy), but Lee, who also wrote and directed, touches on some sensitive nerves. In a fascinating scene of McKee commiserating with friends, they bitch about black men and their attraction to white women, and also touch on the prejudice within their own race based on skin color. Later we learn that McKee is half-white, which certainly complicates the issue.

Sciorra had been seeing a mild-mannered candy store operator, John Turturro. He calmly sits and listens to the racist banter of his customers, most notably Nick Turturro (John's brother in real life). He is a more intellectual person than the "goombahs" he hangs out with, and also his hen-pecked by his elderly father (Anthony Quinn).

In another plot thread, Jackson, playing Snipes' brother, is a crackhead who is constantly asking him for money, as well as hitting on their parents, a rigorously religious reverend (Ossie Davis) and his more sympathetic wife (Ruby Dee). Jackson, in his first major role, steals the film as Gator, a guy who puts on a little dance when he asks for money and doesn't apologize for his lifestyle.

There is a lot going on in Jungle Fever, maybe too much. The music tells different stories. Stevie Wonder's upbeat title song makes the film sound like it's going to be a romantic comedy, but later Lee will overdo a score by Terence Blanchard that includes the Harlem Boy's Choir. I did like a sequence when Snipes goes into the world of crack addicts to find his brother, set to Wonder's "Living for the City," but it's just a bit much at the end when Snipes, reunited with his wife, grabs a young crack whore and shouts "No!" to the heavens.

I think the main problem with Jungle Fever is that there is zero chemistry between Snipes and Sciorra. I suppose bosses and underlings do have sex in the office after Chinese take-out, but they are only together because the script calls for it. I found Sciorra's role severely underwritten. She is the only woman in her house, so is expected to cook for the men (two brothers, including Michael Imperioli) and seemingly longs for something else--when she breaks up with Turturro, she tells him "I have to get out." But there's little else to her. I don't know that we can see any feature that the other person likes, let alone loves.

I also found some of the interracial taboo stuff a bit heavy-handed. Granted, it's not like it used to be. I know several interracial couples and there isn't a second thought about it, but I don't think it was that bad back then. A scene at Sylvia's, a famed Harlem restaurant, in which a waitress (played by then unknown Queen Latifah) is openly rude to Snipes and Sciorra, seems highly unlikely, given that Sylvia's was a place for everybody (I've eaten there) and it would not behoove a waitress to risk her job like that, despite the implication that black men were abandoning sisters in droves.

But I still find Jungle Fever to be thought-provoking, tough-minded cinema, the kind of film that isn't made very often. Lee was still at the top of his game.