遗产的意义

Julian inherits a house in West Philadelphia from his grandmother and asks his girlfriend Gwen to move in, although she turns out to be just the first member of the commune that sets up home with him within its brightly coloured walls. Together with the founding couple, the seven-strong collective are soon reciting African-American poetry, reading post-colonial theory, holding seminars on Sudanese languages and enjoying jazz-inflected jam sessions, with the chest of materials on the wider Black experience apparently left behind by the grandmother proving perfect inspiration to this end. With the prominent poster of Godard’s La chinoise hanging in the kitchen, it’s tempting to read their funkily cerebral exploits as pure fiction, yet they’re actually a reenactment of Asili’s own experiences in a Marxist commune. Real life informs the fiction elsewhere too, as members of the MOVE Organization come to speak at the house, the camera alights on significant sites for the Black community outside in the Philadelphia streets and the inevitable petty arguments about house rules rear their head. And maybe that’s the point: theory rubs up against practice and sparks duly fly.