“Bless your heart,” a former congregant says to Trinitie Childs (Regina Hall), the first lady of the Atlanta-based Baptist megachurch Wander To Greater Paths. As the film crew that’s been following the first lady for weeks looks on, Childs’ immediate reaction, Hall has always been a killer emotive actor, is to hold back the flurry of insults swirling underneath her polite grimace-smile. If you don’t feel the immediate dramatic and comedic tension of “bless your heart,” then Adamma Ebo’s sly, subversive, satirical comedy, “Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul.” probably isn’t for you.
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Produced in tandem with her twin sister Adanne Ebo and Daniel Kaluuya, Ebo’s culturally specific script follows Trinitie, the proverbial good wife, to her vain pastor husband Lee-Curtis (Sterling K Brown), as the couple work to come back from a scandal that’s temporarily closed their church. Ostensibly an interrogation of the hypocrisies lurking within the Southern Baptist church, “Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul.” concerns a test of fate and wonders aloud whether faith and community are worth the heartaches they bring.
In the vein of ostentatious megachurch leaders, think “The Righteous Gemstones” or “The Eyes of Tammy Faye” Trinitie and Lee-Curtis live a life of gaudy luxury supplied by the church coffers “God.” With the scandal hanging over them, their station is under threat. They need a comeback. Lee-Curtis has hired a documentary team led by a fly on the wall director, Anita (voiced by Andrea Laing), to make a puff piece that’ll be sure to bring the couple’s flock back in the fold. But Anita, whose perspective is rendered through the camera’s probing, judgmental gaze, doesn’t seem to be working toward the same goal. And neither Trinitie nor Lee-Curtis are self-aware enough to know how bad they’re gonna look, even for their intended audience.
The first third of Ebo’s shrewd film happily unpeels the big personalities the pair hide behind. The blinkered couple literally sits upon golden thrones, giddily display their closet full of gator and snake-skin shoes and heels, and furnish themselves in fine threads: A palette of regal purple, hot pink, lime green, and lemonade yellow suits and dresses. While Trinitie is the harder half to read (more on her later), Lee-Curtis is an open book, a huckster in every portion of his thrown-away soul.
A master of imbuing real, acute pain in weepy melodramas, the juicy part of a megachurch pastor allows Brown a rare vehicle to stretch his seldom-used comedic muscles. And he is having the time of his life: From the syncopated candace and wide dynamics of his preaching to his emotive physical and facial acting, the typically stiff actor has never been looser, Brown lands every joke. Because the hilarious comedy in “Honk for Jesus” doesn’t spring from what’s said, it’s how it’s said and the reactionary sight gags which supply the jokes. It’s a satirical language common in the mockumentary, which Ebo recalibrates for hardy laughs fueled by one’s own knowledge of Atlanta, Black church services, and the unsaid punchlines ready-made for a specifically Black audience.
For others: Ebo’s admittedly fatty narrative might only translate as one-note. She certainly loses some hard-won momentum once the satirical storytelling fades, and she gestures toward a more serious, ruminative tone. The façade of Lee-Curtis, for instance, disintegrates when the impetus behind his scandal is divulged, as do some of the dramatic cruces. The disclosure of what he’s done and the slight, not wholly original explication of queerphobia within the church that follows the reveal isn’t necessarily a shocking component either. Instead, it’s the heinous methods Lee-Curtis relied on to carry out his scandal that’s caused many, including Anita, to wonder why Trinitie doesn’t just leave him.
The exterior and interior pressures Trinitie faces are the second note to the film’s subtle choir: There’s the oncoming younger, clearly modern, and more relatable co-pastors (played by Conphidance and an unforgettable Nicole Beharie) from the competing church Heaven’s House that reminds the couple of their age. Seemingly nice, every word the ambitious co-pastors utter serves as doublespeak for their real motives. Trinitie’s zealot mother, who believes couples can pray away their differences, and the former congregants who accost the first lady out in public, are the other obstacles causing Trinitie to question the worth of her church.
Because for Trinitie, a church is more than a building: Her community, her family, her place with God are in jeopardy. Ostensibly the shifting aspect ratios, from wide to full screen, often clues us in on when the couple is being filmed and offers a quiet visual tension. As does Ebo’s play with shadows and Marcus Norris’ funny, sometimes bleak score (find you a movie that has space for both “Knuck Till You Buck” and “Never Would Have Made It”).
Holding the hijinks and commentary together is Hall. There’s no way to overstate the overwhelming breadth of her performance. Few actresses are as expressive with their eyes as her. It’s a trait that’s always served her well in the comedic space, allowing her to sell punch lines and sight gags from page to the screen with ease. That same talent also translates to her dramatic language. There is a crucible stirring within Trinitie, one whose simmer reaches its boil through Hall.
The film’s final act features a roadside confrontation, a Black Jesus statue (the best since Buddy Christ), and the actress in black and white face paint performing praise miming. But it’s Hall’s cathartic ending monolog, which veers away from any treacly overacting, that displays all of what’s made her one of our best, most underappreciated actresses. The film’s final shot, the silent resignation delivered by an extreme close-up of Hall’s broken expression, further adds a tragic end to a woman caught in a seemingly inescapable situation.
Through Brown and especially Hall’s fully committed performances, scenes like this and “bless your heart,” which move in both potent and profound ways, gives the ropiness of “Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul.” enough depth to pray for the arrival of Ebo’s next feature. [B]
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