Alma’s Rainbow review – early 90s coming-of-ager is gem of black female empowerment

Ayoka Chenzira is a pioneering black director whose films have been finding a new audience with younger generations as she enters her 70s. Her 1994 feature debut Alma’s Rainbow has now been restored and rereleased; it is a coming-of-age movie that is funny and warm, if a little scrappy. It’s set in a Brooklyn townhouse owned by prim and proper Alma (Kim Weston-Moran), who runs a beauty parlour on the ground floor. In this all-women space, Chenzira luxuriates in her female characters. The fact that historically so few films have been made about the inner lives of black women gives Alma’s Rainbow a precious quality, and the feeling that it’s a gem to treasure.

Alma lives in the house with her teenage daughter Rainbow (played with charisma and spark by Victoria Gabrielle Platt). Rainbow has been skipping school to perform with a hip-hop street dance crew. In the neighbourhood, she’s known as a tomboy, but Rainbow is starting to think about boys. Her mum, Alma, is not impressed; she’s worked to the bone to make a success of the beauty parlour, to be an independent woman and build a better life for Rainbow. It makes her strict: “Keep your pants up and your dress down,” she instructs her daughter.

Then into their lives swans Alma’s sister Ruby (Mizan Kirby), a nightclub singer who’s been living in Paris. Ruby has the air of a superstar diva, though the truth is she can’t afford a taxi fare to the city. What follows is struggle for teenage Rainbow’s soul, all three women living under one roof.

And what a roof. The gorgeous set design, with a wood panelled bathroom and high ceilings, makes the house feel like a palace. (These days, actual royalty are among the few who can afford a place like this in Brooklyn.) The other glory of the film is the gorgeous costumes that add to the sense of putting these women on a pedestal, at a time the rest of the industry was mostly ignoring them.

• Alma’s Rainbow is in UK cinemas from 3 August.