If you grew up in the south, you know pageants are as routine as eating black-eyed peas and greens on New Year’s Day. For some, it was a measuring stick for beauty. For others, it offered the gateway to a promising future through winning scholarship money or something to add to your college application. And for the select few who escorted a contestant, it was a great way to meet girls, but I digress. In her feature film debut, Channing Godfrey Peoples approaches pageants as a stepping stone to a better life. Miss Juneteenth is a story about a former Miss Juneteenth pageant winner’s disconnect with her daughter as they clash over the latter’s rejection of following in her mom’s pageant footsteps. Is Miss Juneteenth worthy of a crown or did Steve Harvey read the wrong name again? Cue that first walk because this one is a winner.
In front of the camera, the game belongs to Nicole Beharie and only Nicole Beharie. The film focuses on the mother-daughter dynamic, but Behaire does the heavy lifting in what is easily her best performance since 2008’s American Violet. It feels weird saying someone with the skill and experience of Behaire just gave her breakout performance, but this should be a career-defining for her.
The thing that makes this performance special is Beharie’s use of non-verbal cues to emote the pain and disappointment attached to the obstacles that knock Turquoise off track as she tries to move ahead. She’s even more impressive when she applies the same method to exuding confidence and grace as Turquoise continues to press forward for a way out
Behind the camera, Peoples has as brilliant a debut as one could want as a writer and director. If this were hip-hop, she would be DMX and Miss Juneteenth would be her It’s Dark and Hell Is Hot. The script takes the oft-used mother vs. daughter clash and removes the abusive nature generally associated with that dynamic, especially in Black films. By implementing this tweak, Peoples tells a more full-bodied story that covers the unwavering love between mother and daughter despite their differences, independence, and the potential every woman has to be her absolute best regardless of society’s judgments.
In the director’s chair, Peoples is equally strong. Her use of color is perfect as it sets the tone for Turquoise’s past and present. In flashbacks to Turquoise's earlier days and pageant related scenes, Peoples uses vibrant bright colors as almost to demonstrate the promise Turquoise once held and that the pageant holds for its contestants. For the present-day scenes, Peoples dials things down so well to show how far Turquoise fell from grace that the film appears to be a world away from its suburban of Fort Worth, Texas setting.
Another highlight of Peoples’s direction is how modestly she tells the story. There are not any flashy or preachy moments in the film, but the tale still hits home with the impact of movies with a theatrical approach to storytelling. The only negative for Miss Juneteenth from a storytelling standpoint is the lack of a definitive backstory for Turquoise. However, that is a minuscule issue considering how well Peoples did everything else.
Miss Juneteenth is a beautiful film that goes far beyond what its history-rich title suggests. While it does utilize the pageant and holiday as the backdrop for its story, the film uses subtlely to skillfully address themes that similar mother-daughter coming of age movies either miss or become too preachy to convey their point. It doesn’t have the energetic dialogue and conflict expected for a battle of wills. Still, the combination of Beharie’s performance and Peoples’s smooth writing and directing are enough to make Miss Juneteenth second to none.
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