by Jason Adams
We don't talk enough about Kasi Lemmons, the actress. Maybe it's because she proved herself an absolutely terrific director in 1997 with the wildly underrated Eve's Bayou -- and she's got the Harriet bio-pic with Cynthia Erivo coming out in November -- and maybe it's because Hollywood, per their usual routine when it comes to too many black actresses, never gave her a truly great role to play with. But she's got a two-fer in the early 90s as "the best friend" in seminal horror films that she really managed to inject a lot of life into.
The most prominent one is obviously The Silence of the Lambs, where Kasi played Jodie Foster's fellow FBI recruit and friend Cordelia -- the film doesn't have much time for her but she proves a capable ally to Clarice, and as with any actress Jodie ever co-starred with the two of them had way more chemistry than with any man on the premises...
But the more interesting role I think is that of Bernadette in Candyman. Bernard Rose's 1992 film, adapted from Clive Barker's short story "The Forbidden", has always had a hand-grenade reputation when it comes to talking about the subject of Race in America -- it's about a white woman walking into a black neighborhood and yanking at the threads of their community with her privileged curiosity until she's unleashed an unspeakable horror. Every time Helen (Virginia Madsen) wakes up from one of her walking dreams she's covered in yet another black person's blood.
One of those times that blood is that of her best friend Bernie (Lemmons), who much like in Lambs has been there to first encourage the leading lady's interests, and then later to warn her that she's gotten too deep into dark matters. Candyman's focus on Race immediately makes this relationship a more fraught one, though. The more obsessed that Helen gets with digging around in Cabrini Green's secret histories the more strained her relationship with Bernie becomes, and Lemmons really lets you onto the sense, one that remains unspoken, that she feels used by her friend. Used as a wedge in; suspicious of Helen's reasons for even being her friend. And of course that becomes the ultimate betrayal and violation between the two -- once Helen's fantasies have drained her friend dry Bernie's dead body is literally turned a bloodless white.
Anyway it's no surprise that Jordan Peele is currently producing a rebooted reimagining of Candyman that will be directed by Little Woods film-maker Nia DaCosta -- I have to admit part of me wished that Kasi Lemmons herself had decided to take a swing at the reboot; that could've been a kick! Here's an extra feature from the recent Candyman blu-ray that shows Lemmons talking about the filming of the 1992 film: