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Sunday, May 26, 2013

An accounting of some great interracial film couples


Jim and Selena from 28 Days Later, Mace and Lenny from Strange Days, Kenya and Brian from Something New. Those are a few of my all-time great celluloid interracial couples. They can go toe to toe with any non-mixed couple, gay or straight, representing horror, the police thriller or comedy today. Except for the last couple, whose relationship came about because the heroine answered a dating dare, the others sprang from the intrinsic human drive to survive. It proves that no matter one’s color, self-preservation trumps racial difference every time one’s ass is on the line. And it doesn’t hurt to look hot doing it. Shock upon shocks, in all three films the white guy was attractive and had substance and was drawn to the heroine for something other than her otherness (Cillian Murphy, Ralph Fiennes, Simon Baker). Usually if any interracial love bonding occurs on film, the Black heroine gets a sorry to sad looking white guy to star opposite. That would never happen to Julia Roberts. In Closer, she got Jude Law and Clive Owen. Sigh. Wait a sec, Miss Roberts even got to star opposite chocolate eye-candy, Denzel Washington in The Pelican Brief. Wait again. She didn’t even get a longing look from his character let alone kiss him. Oh that dirty Hollywood double standard!  Julia and Denzel didn’t even get to hold hands but Halle Berry and Billy Bob Thornton in Monster’s Ball make the beast with two backs, full nudity and all. Yeah, I know she got an Oscar for her performance but her real prize came in the form of being a Bond girl snuggling with Pierce Brosnan in Die Another Day. 

Just my thoughts on good, interracial duos in film. I left out Danny Glover and Mel Gibson, didn’t I? But they don't count. Do you have any interracial (male-female) film couples you like?

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