Obsessed

Obsessed
Directed by Steve Shill
Runtime: 105 min.

Beyoncé doesn’t waste a good lyric. As the wife of a man stalked by a crazed woman in Obsessed, Beyoncé gives musical measure to these lines: “You come into my house/You touch/My child!” She’s an “actress who sings” (as Streisand always says) but with a homegirl’s special audience rapport, not diva aloofness. Beyoncé’s Sharon Charles, a young black middle-class homemaker, protects her domicile, child and her man, Derek (Idris Elba) from strangely maniacal harassment by Lisa (Ali Larter), an unhinged, almost comically sexualized white interloper.

Sharon’s actually a supporting role but Beyoncé tilts the balance by acting out the ineradicable superstition of black female moviegoers who feel threatened by black men’s attraction or susceptibility to white women (a theme recently dramatized in Not Easily Broken). Obsessed’s obsession evokes that “Gold Digger” line where Kanye West climaxes “He gonna leave yo’ ass for a white girl!” Bessie Smith never sang this malady, but Beyoncé gives it modern heft. It’s startling to see ghetto-toughness jump out of this full-fledged pop star. Beyoncé nearly justifies the trashy-woman’s-picture concept through the realness of her onscreen charisma and recognizable emotion. Plus, she’s due a hit after her tough-tender Etta James performance in the underappreciated Cadillac Records.

Even as junk, Obsessed isn’t kick-ass enough. The wind-up to Sharon’s explosion takes too long, and director Steve Shill can’t stage a real donnybrook. It needs a knock-down drag-out like John Wayne and Victor McLaglen in The Quiet Man or at least Queen Latifah’s girl-on-girl circus brawl in Bringing Down the House. Screenwriter David Loughery manipulates unconvincing marital tension as in his Lakeview Terrace script. Critics mistake his imprecise drama for a modern Fatal Attraction; the New York Times even referenced the O.J. Simpson trial.  Both guesses are ignorant of the emotional currents in black American culture that Beyoncé intuits. But if Glenn Close represented AIDS in Fatal Attraction then Ali Larter must symbolize the threat of racism lingering in the “post-racial” Obama age. If that’s too much baggage even for Beyoncé maybe Hollywood will smarten up and cast her in a remake of Cleopatra Jones.