Change Your Image
hahajohnson
Reviews
The Feast of All Saints (2001)
Better casting would've meant a better movie
The plot of this movie- the practice of plessage and its effects on generations of black and mixed-race families- is interesting and revealing. The problem is that the acting and directing seemed amateurish at times. Robert Ri'chard (Marcel) was cute but so over-the-top it was distracting. I don't know much about him as an actor but maybe he was just inexperienced at the time of this movie. Why was he blond, by the way? Yes, his father was white but we're not all blond. He had more pronounced African features than his light-skinned mother (Gloria Reuben) but his hair was platinum blond. ??? Did they feel they had to make him blond to prove that his father was white? His childhood love Annabella was supposedly the daughter of a freed slave and not a product of plessage, but she was just as light-skinned as the characters with a white parent. What- they couldn't find a dark-skinned actress to play the part? I find that hard to believe. The only dark-skinned actors in this movie were peripheral characters. I'm white and even I was insulted.
These actors were all absolutely gorgeous, but I didn't get the sense that they were all cast for their acting ability. Jennifer Beals was great as was Gloria Reuben. The young women who played Marie, Annabella and Lissette were good, and so was the (cute) guy who played Richard. (I think it was Daniel Sunjata.) I always like James Earl Jones. The rest just weren't that great. Just like other Anne Rice movies this story could've been better told with better casting.