Hotbed of racial hate

JUNGLE FEVER (1991)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Spike Lee's "Jungle Fever" is one of his most audacious and entertaining films yet, curiously, one of his most flawed. But we can forgive Spike for not sticking as close to his subject matter as one might have hoped - his film rocks and strikes at us with some of the frankest discussions about race ever committed to film.

"Jungle Fever" begins with Flipper (Wesley Snipes), a successful architect with a light-skinned black wife (Lonette McKee) and a precious daughter who pretends she never hears their lovemaking each morning. Life is as normal as can be (as established by the boy throwing the New York Times at their doorstep in slow-motion). Of course, tension exists from the start. Flipper has a new receptionist, an Italian-American named Angie (Annabella Sciorra), when in fact he requested an African-American (he put it in writing after all). But the more Flipper gets accustomed to Angie, the more he feels the "fever." He craves Angie because he wants to know what it is like to bed a white woman. Angie falls into it as well, though her initial reasons (outside of horniness) are never made clear. At one point Flipper tells her, "You were curious about black," yet Angie is not so sure.

If "Jungle Fever" stuck to its guns in delivering insights on interracial couples, it might have been a small masterpiece. But writer-director Spike Lee explores other issues. We learn Flipper has a God-fearing family, including his father, the Good Reverend Dr. Purify (Ossie Davis), and his mother, Lucinda (Ruby Dee), both of whom praise God while Mathalia Jackson music plays in the background. We also learn that Flipper's brother, Gator (Samuel L. Jackson, in an electrifying performance that won him a Cannes Best Actor award), is a crackhead who frequents a corroded, uninviting crack den called the Taj Majal with his woman, Viv (the virtually unrecognizable Halle Berry).

Then we learn about Angie's family, which includes her widowed father (Frank Vincent) and her two foul-mouthed brothers. Every night she has to cook dinner for them. She is also engaged to Paulie (John Turturro) who works at a luncheonette owned by his overbearing father (Anthony Quinn), who refuses to carry the New York Times because it doesn't sell. Angie mistakenly confides in her two best friends, Denise (Debi Mazar) and Louise (Gina Mastrogiacomo), about her affair with Flipper. Let's just say that this ignites the hotbed of racial hate.

For starters, Paulie's Italian-American customers and friends turn on him for liking the friendly black woman that buys the Times each morning (and for not expressing more outrage over Angie's conduct). Angie's father beats up Angie in a scene of tremendous violence. Flipper's wife flips out to say the least, and it leads to a wonderful, much-discussed sequence where a group of black women frankly discuss where the good, faithful black men are (apparently, they are sanitation workers and bus drivers).

"Jungle Fever" is feverish, exciting, alert filmmaking by Spike Lee but he tends to dwarf his own premise and reduce it, slimming it down to something about nothing less than racial myths. Flipper may feel that way about the relationship but he is also speaking for Angie, who is not allowed to express her own view. After they are both slighted at an all-black restaurant, she asks a simple question: "What are we doing?" Flipper responds by saying, "I honestly...don't know." Lee says this couple is not in love - they are experimenting with their own racial attitudes and living up to certain idealized myths. It is a shame that Sciorra shows far more depth in her character than the screenplay allows. A shame largely because Spike Lee refuses to be encumbered by at least one scene where the couple discuss anything but race.

The best scenes are the discussions of race, racism and interracial relationships among the characters. Once again, I'd argue that an interracial couple spends as little time as possible discussing their race than making passionate love. Still, the honesty of how each character feels is expressed with enough persuasive power to hopefully make the audience wonder why race has to be the standard in defining anything. But once too often, Lee gets sidetracked into all the drug business with Gator which, as powerful as most of those scenes are, have little to do with the central theme. Still, for a movie this tantalizing and brave and expertly performed, "Jungle Fever" shouldn't be ignored.