An Oversimplification Of Her Beauty (2013)
Average Rating: 7.4/10
Reviews Counted: 19
Fresh: 16 | Rotten: 3
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: 7.4/10
Critic Reviews: 11
Fresh: 11 | Rotten: 0
No consensus yet.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.1/5
User Ratings: 419
Movie Info
Executive producers Jay-Z, Dream Hampton, and Wyatt Cenac present Terence Nance's explosively creative debut feature, AN OVERSIMPLIFICATION OF HER BEAUTY. With arresting insight, vulnerability, and a delightful sense of humor, the film documents the relationship between Terence (Nance) and a lovely young woman (Namik Minter) as it teeters on the divide between platonic and romantic. Utilizing a tapestry of live action and multiple styles of animation, the film blurs the line between narrative,
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Cast
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Terence Nance
Narrator, Terence -
Namik Minter
Narrator -
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Reg E. Cathey
Narrator -
Ruby Amanze
Narrator
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All Critics (19) | Top Critics (11) | Fresh (16) | Rotten (3)
Bold and varied animation sequences lift this into the stratosphere before it falls back into Nance's obsessively layered narrative; the resulting film is both beautiful and disorienting (just like love).
Top CriticWhile the movie doesn't paint a clear sense of Nance's emotional side, one thing is certain: He is an artist with creativity to spare. This effort may not have been wholly successful, but it's a promising start to what could be a thrilling career.
It is an emotionally exhausting but ultimately rewarding kaleidoscope of video, animation, words and music - and feelings on top of feelings on top of feelings.
The excess and earnestness suit the subject - the ephemeral and all-consuming nature of romantic love.
What saves the film-and grandly-is Nance's wildly ambitious visual imagination.
A dense, organic, dazzling and funny tapestry, making use of varied and subtly colored animation and stop-motion; candid video; playfully verbose direct address; chapters and footnotes and doodles; and suavely chosen music and sonic bridges.
An artistic but unpretentious examination of young love, with all its uncertainties and mini-tragedies.
Chock-a-block with creativity and cleverness, but ultimately too much of muchness.
Ghetto psychobabble strictly for the attention-deficit, Jay-Z demographic.
Incredibly heartfelt and sincere and urgent... It is the film that it is because it is sloppy and rough.
On the one hand, its multiple postmodernist levels and medium shifts make it one of the most original movies of the year. On the other, its relative lack of substance...is frustrating and causes the film to run out of juice about halfway through.
An Oversimplification of Her Beauty is a serious but never somber offering from a member of the Brooklyn boheme 2.0 generation.
I doubt I'll see a more visually inventive film at this fest-or this year, that matter-but I do wish that Oversimplification were easier to connect to.
Audience Reviews for An Oversimplification Of Her Beauty
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Once we get past the unnecessarily complicated intro, Nance's keenly observational exploration of urban relationships, told with seemingly random comic asides and insights, suggest a kinship to the early works of Spike Lee. The first chapter details what appears to be another day, as Nance tries to arrange an evening engagement with the girl of his dreams, Namik Winter, but finding it difficult to do so for one reason or another. The loopy time structure repeatedly folds in on itself, tediously presenting the same scene with new information. Nance has a lot to say about himself, but struggles to get right down to it. When he finally does, it comes out in floods and never stops. An exhausting flow of self-examination is thankfully broken up by truly inventive visuals as Nance switches up the medium at a whim, combining hand drawn animation, claymation, and gritty archival footage. Unquestionably this is one of the most original films of the year, but as Nance continually switches gears and adds more artistic flourishes, he overwhelms us with information in an attempt to make his story unique.
Nance bravely presents a "warts and all" version of himself, an immature Bohemian manchild who both pushes the women who love him away, and pines for the ones who show the least interest. Namik gets the better end of the deal as she's the vision of a strong, intelligent, diverse African-American woman. Switching into documentary mode with a heavy reliance on archival footage, we see Nance as he presents a version of the film to a private audience, all without Namik's permission. When he confronts her with it, she expresses displeasure at it the one-sided nature of the story, but she doesn't seem too upset at having her life put on display. In fact, she doesn't really seem to care as much as Nance tries to make it appear, perhaps to try and drum up some tension that is sorely lacking. An Oversimplification Of Her Beauty works as a beautiful visual patchwork quilt, and there's a lot to admire, but it probably would have worked better as a short subject than a feature film.