Nappily Ever After is a 2018 comedy about a woman who, tired of waiting for her longtime boyfriend to propose, breaks up with him, only to stress when he begins to date others.
Everything external about Haifaa Al-Mansour‘s sassy new comedy Nappily After Ever – including its title – will have you believe this is a movie about the power of one woman’s hair, and sure, most of what happens centers on physical appearance, yet there’s nothing superficial about this often funny, genuinely empowering little movie. Sure, perhaps some might not fully embrace the concentration to and impact of what ‘good hair’ means to those it matters to, yet there is more to this than pretty locks, and with a string of terrific performances under its belt, this is a fun and entertaining story with some real heart.
Violet (Sanaa Lathan) is a beautiful woman, something she’s taken pride in since she was very young, her adoring mother Pauletta (Lynn Whitfield) imprinting early what the value of her looks – and especially her hair – will have as she grows. Unfortunately, this obsession with perfect hair has defined her life, the effort to constantly straighten and maintain it limiting her ability to let loose. This becomes most clear the night she thinks her longtime boyfriend Clint (Ricky Whittle) is going to propose, though what she gets instead is not at all what she expects. Confessing that he can’t commit to a girl who won’t ‘let her hair down’ and have some fun, he takes off, leaving her to begin an odyssey of new hairstyles and lifestyle choices to find the new Violet.
What’s best about Nappily Ever After, despite its humor, is how it never makes the hair absurd even if the situations Violent finds herself in are. She is always humanized in these comedic moments, the movie finding effective ways to spin some authenticity out of the darkness. While the movie does have plenty of old standards at play, as romance and heartache are nothing but such things, Al-Mansour finds ways to give it some weight.
And that leads to an absolutely stunning moment at the end of the first act when Violet commits to a transformative break from herself that is one of the most affecting scenes in recent memory. I won’t for a second reveal what it is, though you can probably guess, but what Al-Mansour does and where Lathan takes it is nothing short of cathartic, a shocking, volcanic act of evolution that stirs to the core.
This is Al-Mansour’s second English-language film, she renowned for being the first female filmmaker in Saudi Arabia, her movies about women in powerful states of metamorphosis. Nappily Ever After is a finely-tuned and accomplished film of the same theme and works well because it never cheats its audience, the hair in Violet’s life a factor in nearly everything that matters to her but never a crutch, the more the movie moves on, the more effective it becomes. This is mostly due to several very strong and natural performances, with Whitfield very good and young newcomer Daria Johns making some waves.
While Nappily Ever After sort of surrounds itself in its message, keeping Violet orbiting the idea that beauty is everything, from her advertising career to social cues and more, at least it stays true the woman, and with Lathan doing the best work of her career, this is genuinely worth a look. Highly recommended.