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‘The Young Wife’ Review: The Nervous Bride Saga Gets a Sumptuous, Stylized Makeover
In 'The Young Wife,' directed by Tayarisha Poe, Kiersey Clemons and Leon Bridges star as a couple caught up in a heightened-reality wedding day.
So, on the day of her and River’s nuptials, she appears to be wrestling less with the meaning of marriage and more with the weight of the word “wife.” Warm hearts and cooling feet is nothing new for movies, of course, but Kiersey Clemons ’ portrayal of Celestina — her head spinning — raises the stakes of love and liberty. If Poe’s 2019 debut “Selah and the Spades”— set amid the cliques at an East Coast prep school — tossed and teased the high-school meanies genre, this film plies the fairytale quandaries of a female protagonist with creative jukes toward Black futurism. The look is sumptuous, stylized: honoring the natural world of the location (it was shot in Savannah, Georgia) while resisting any realism (the smartly defiant production design is the work of Rocio Gimenez) beyond Celestina’s authentic doubts.
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