As effective as Octavia Spencer was at terrorizing teenagers in the recent “Ma,” she’s both scarier and much more human here, writes critic JustinCChang
A cruel story of youth, race and the politics of respectability, “Luce” grows out of a conflict between a high school history teacher, Harriet Wilson , and one of her star pupils, Luce Edgar .
Luce himself was once one of Fanon’s so-called wretched of the Earth. Formerly a child soldier in war-ravaged Eritrea, he was adopted at age 10 by Amy and Peter , a Virginia couple with a nice house and unimpeachably good intentions. Their devotion to their son is apparent in their easy, affectionate family banter, and also in the character of Luce himself.
What makes Harriet’s stance so compelling is that she sees Luce as both a threat to be neutralized and a promise to be fulfilled. A young man so rich in real and symbolic potential — an African immigrant who survived a war zone and processed his trauma to become a shining American success story — must be protected and uplifted at any cost. But there are few things that children can really be protected from, suspicion perhaps least of all.
Does something sinister lurk beneath Luce’s charming smiles and those stirring, silver-tongued speeches he is regularly called on to deliver at school assemblies? Is he a dangerous, tormented individual who has mastered the tricky art of code switching to a near-sociopathic degree? Or is this all just a big misunderstanding — an unfortunate product of the fact that he and his less enviable, less privileged friends share lockers? And if so, does that really make the situation any better, so long...
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