Young Soul Rebels (1991)
Set
in London in 1977, Young Soul Rebels focuses on a pirate radio station
run by the Black, openly gay Caz and his half-white, half-Black,
straight best friend Chris, who illegally bring soul and R&B hits to
the masses.
Set during
the Queen’s Silver Jubilee and inspired by luminary queer director Isaac
Julien’s days as a soul boy himself, the genre-blurring movie is part
murder mystery, part queer romance, and part musical love letter to a
period in British history when Black style was developing its own
unmistakable identity.
In
a sharp, giallo-style opening, Caz’s friend is killed while cruising a
local park, kicking off a plot that introduces probing questions that
disrupt the duo’s lives and persist today: Can you rely on police
accountability when queer people are murdered? How do marginalized
communities acknowledge and protect their own who inhabit multiple
vulnerable identities at once?
Julien
gracefully handles these and other issues, adding further depth through
Caz’s romance with white punk socialist Billibud, which underscores
racist and homophobic tendencies in the era’s punk scene.
