There’s warmth, humour, sadness and tenderness in this big-hearted feature debut from writer-director Dionne Edwards. It’s a movie about masculinity that could have been solemn and prescriptive; instead it’s pulsing with humanity, thanks in great part to tremendous performances from its leads Natey Jones, Alexandra Burke and smart newcomer Temilola Olatunbosun.
Burke is already known as a West End performer, recording star and X Factor winner; she plays Candice, a singer about to land the role of a lifetime playing Tina Turner in a big musical – just a few more audition rounds to go. But she has problems: teen daughter Kenisha (Olatunbosun) is in trouble at school, and her partner, Travis (Jones) is just out of prison on licence, his ankle tag giving him a strange and sinister limp.
Travis was a DJ and music entrepreneur before crime dragged him down: he was going to be the Jay-Z to Candice’s Beyoncé. On the face of it, Travis is a scary tough guy, whose mere presence quietens some lairy boys making too much noise on their estate. But Travis is no Ike Turner: he is romantic and gallant and he buys Candice an inspirationally gorgeous red dress for her audition, paying for it by taking a humiliatingly menial job in the pub owned by his overbearing elder brother. That amazing sparkly red dress hangs on the back of their bedroom door, like a ghost or a fetish, almost a new addition to their family. Travis, with nothing to do all day but hang around the flat on his own, is entranced by the dress’s sensuality, and wonders how that dress would feel if he tried it on himself.
The inevitable watch-it-through-your-fingers moment when Candice comes home unexpectedly early one afternoon is carried off by Jones and Burke with great flair. Travis tries styling it out, claiming he was preparing a wacky panto prank and Burke shows how Candice is shocked, bewildered, angry but infinitesimally ready to be fooled into believing the excuses in order to preserve everything she believed about her partner and their relationship. And there is more pain when Kenisha is dragged into the cover-up, and perpetuating the secrets and lies.
Pretty Red Dress is a movie with a passing resemblance to Julian Jarrold’s 2005 comedy Kinky Boots with Chiwetel Ejiofor as a drag artist who helps a crisis-hit factory make custom-built shoes with reinforced male-weight-bearing high heels for performers like him. There is in fact a similar issue here: the pretty red dress is not made for a male body like Travis’s and it disastrously rips. Kinky Boots was converted into a stage musical and it wouldn’t be surprising to see Pretty Red Dress go the same way with a dozen or so newly written songs, and there’s a tailor-made star right there with Burke. But in some ways it would be a shame to risk losing the intimacy and complexity of Pretty Red Dress in a theatre version. At all events, this is an intensely likable film with a trio of great performances.
• Pretty Red Dress screened at the London film festival and is released on 16 June in UK and Irish cinemas.
