Despite having a number of things going for it--strong performances throughout, particularly from child actors; moments of intense beauty and visual poetry--Barry Jenkin's Moonlight doesn't fully come together. This cinematic triptych of the youth, adolescence, and adulthood of a gay black man from Miami took the Toronto Film Festival by storm, many critics proclaiming it one of the year's greatest triumphs. But again, the film doesn't fully come together. It tries to mix moments of intense hallucinogenic wonder such as a vision of his junkie mother moving backwards into a neon-lit doorway to yell at him with prolonged sequences of cinéma vérité dialogue. If the film had committed to either strictly oneiric or strictly realistic, it would have had more dramatic heft. But in trying to be both, it fails at both. The third act feels deflated and overlong, the middle third rushed and spotty. It felt like it was missing an essential something. Not sure what that something is, but it needed it.
6/10
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