Unexplained Presence

For this brilliant debut, Bryant narrates the movements of peripheral African-American characters in film and other media—characters who seem to be there innocuously, as in Stephen Frears's Sammy & Rosie Get Laid or François Ozon's 8 Femmes —but end up loaded with multiple, conflicting meanings: “Caty's eyes shut in grief, or its double, ecstasy; her eyes shut within the shot. This is the moment, the clichéd ending. Le samouraï is dying. But she does not run to him, calling his name through a veil of tears. Her hand does not reach for eyes, her mouth, or her heart, as she watches, as we watch, him die.” (May)