When the time comes to write about the 2020s in film, COVID will undoubtedly be viewed as the defining event of the decade. But as the pandemic becomes part of our new normal, one aspect of COVID continues to inspire filmmakers: quarantine. In many ways more than the virus itself, the collective act of hunkering down and staying put has been coming up a lot in films lately. And it’s not hard to imagine that quarantine helped give birth to “I’m A Virgo,” Boots Riley’s sophomore effort after bursting onto the scene in 2018 with his absurdist satire “Sorry To Bother You.”
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Set, once again, in his hometown of Oakland, “I’m A Virgo” (which airs on Prime Video as a seven-episode limited series) treads similar territory to Riley’s debut. But where “Sorry To Bother You” chose to keep its fantastical elements under wraps until the third act, “I’m A Virgo” is far more upfront about the kind of story it is. In the first shot, we see Lafrancine (played by Carmen Ejogo) holding a newborn baby the size of a ’tween. Lafrancine and her husband Martisse (played by Mike Epps) take the baby home and raise him in a sequence that recalls Malick’s montage storytelling in “The Tree of Life.” At 19, their son, Cootie, is 13 feet tall and living in an oversized backyard house. He has lived his whole life in isolation and what he knows of the world is largely from TV (shades of Hal Ashby’s “Being There”).
Of course, the world is calling to Cootie, and his furtive nighttime forays lead to new friends, viral internet celebrity, and first love. Beyond that, it’s hard to say a lot about the plot of “I’m A Virgo” because the less you know, the better. Cootie’s confinement clearly has its roots in our collective experience of quarantine, but what Riley is really setting his sights on is the superhero genre.
I was on a panel with Riley years ago, and he talked about loving comic books as a young person (specifically Marvel’s “Daredevil”). He also talked about how his political worldview (Riley identifies as a communist) disrupted his love of comics since superheroes invariably attack criminals who are ultimately a by-product of the capitalist system. Riley has taken this critique and made it a major ingredient of “I’m A Virgo.”
Riley takes a lot of the pleasures of the comic book movie and weds it to pointed social satire. In this way, he is following in the footsteps of Spike Lee. Both men reject the idea that making films about issues of race and class necessitates a realist approach to storytelling. And with the expanded canvas of a series format, Riley is able to tell a more novelistic story that explores the lives of the supporting characters and the world he’s creating.
The show’s surrealism will undoubtedly draw comparisons to “Atlanta,” but whereas Donald Glover’s show seemed to enjoy being provocative for the sake of being provocative, Riley’s show is pretty unabashedly anti-capitalist agitprop (he even has his villain, tech billionaire-turned-superhero Jay Whittle — played by the great Walton Goggins — defend the idea of propaganda). The series seems destined to serve a term as a culture war bete noire, and Riley is no doubt prepared for this attack as well as the inevitable leftist attack that being associated with Amazon (through its Prime Video streamer) will bring.
The task of bringing to life a 13-foot giant means Riley gets to stretch as director and use a mixture of techniques like forced perspective, dolls as stand-ins, and some CGI, but ultimately, his greatest special effect is Jharrel Jerome. The young actor who won an Emmy for his work in Ava DuVernay’s “When They See Us” once again turns in a strong performance as an innocent person trying to find his way in the world. Jerome’s expressive eyes say as much as any of the lines written for his character as he experiences the world for the first time on his own and not filtered for him by his old-school lefty parents.
Some of Jerome’s best work is with Olivia Washington (daughter of Denzel and Pauletta Washington) as Flora, a worker at a fast food restaurant who has more in common with Cootie than meets the eye. Washington has a tremendous amount of presence and charisma. Whenever I’ve seen a first performance by someone destined for stardom, there’s a curious sense of deja vu: you know you haven’t seen this performer before, but you feel as though you have. Washington has that quality, and I’m sure we’ll see big things from her.
Transitioning from feature-length to serial storytelling suits Riley well, and you’ll probably want to watch the whole season in one go. The series loses some momentum in the last three episodes when Cootie decides to take his stand against the system and his one-time idol Jay Whittle, but the conversation the series is having about activism is fascinating (several hilarious bits are lampooning the idea of reform). Riley’s method for making his anti-capitalist screeds cinematic is inventive and engaging. Like Rabelais, who also told a story about a giant, Riley’s slightly off-kilter world is just familiar enough while pointing out some of the everyday absurdities we all have come to accept. [A-]
“I’m A Virgo” debuts on Prime Video on June 23.
