There’s a wide gap between outright acceptance and outright rejection. And it’s somewhere within that muddled centre that Dionne Edwards has set her directorial debut, Pretty Red Dress, about a husband’s reckoning with what it means to be a man. Edwards’s film is an admirable if somewhat slight attempt to explore how the gender binary harms all. And, more specifically, the rigid boundaries placed on Black masculinity.
Travis (Natey Jones), recently released from prison, has returned to his old life. His wife, Candice (Alexandra Burke, former X Factor winner and recent West End mainstay) held down the fort and raised their daughter Kenisha (Temilola Olatunbosun) while he was away. His release gives her a chance to pursue her own desires, her heart dead-set on the starring role in a musical based on the life of Tina Turner (who died last month).
