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Writer/director Rodney Evans’s ambitious, engaging film evokes the Harlem Renaissance as lived by Bruce Nugent, a black gay poet who collaborated with Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Wallace Thurman on the short-lived literary magazine Fire!! The interactions among these notables are depicted in black-and-white flashbacks; the present-day framing story, in color, focuses on the relationship between the now aged and homeless Nugent (Roger Robinson) and Perry (Anthony Mackie), a black gay student and artist who befriends him. More than just an ennobling history lesson but less than a total success, Brother to Brother betrays some strain as it tries to keep up with its various cultural, social, and dramatic responsibilities. The actors do a lot to limber up the film — thanks to them and to skillful direction, the low budget hampers the re-creation of 1920s Harlem less than you might expect. But the sharpest and best-realized scenes are set in the present: the handling of the elderly man’s unconsummated lust for his young friend is wry and understated, and the scenes showing the aftermath of Perry’s fling with a white student are unsettling. (94 minutes)
BY CHRIS FUJIWARA
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