Sundance Pick: An Oversimplification of Her Beauty

An Oversimplification of Her Beauty defies categorization, in all the best ways possible.

The first thing to know is that the film isn’t a linear story. It’s a complex and complicated exploration of modern love, an intriguing dance between two characters circling the possibility of a relationship, born out of mutual infatuation. Avant-guarde storytelling in the key of noir, Oversimplification blends animation, live action, and narration to tell the tale of Terence falling in love with Namik. The characters are real people, based on their own lives. Nance earned his spot in the New Frontier section of Sundance – in addition to the innovative, movie-within-a-movie style of storytelling, animation also plays a key role. Exploring his inner emotions through stop-motion figure dolls and beautifully rendered scenes, Nance essentially uses this film as therapy, working out the complicated tangle of his messy romantic life.

Refreshingly, black women are Nance’s muses. Often in cinematic depictions of black love, the relationship is construed as adversarial. Here, as Nance documents the many loves that fit his archetype of “brown, maternal, well read, well traveled,” black women take center stage, his love for each of them palpable through the screen.

But is what he feels for them really love? Nance believes so, and spends most of the film trying to articulate what he loves about Namik, and how his past relationship history lead him to this point of nearly breathless anticipation. The film is ripe with themes for exploration but I will have to leave most of those paths untouched. Nance has created a work so complex, it is almost like recorded performance art. Thus, I agree with Tambay – it needs to be experienced. Hopefully, it finds a distributor because it deserves to be seen and experienced by as many people as possible. Nance’s story is both familiar and strange, and tends to provoke a lot of self-reflection in the audience. Who are we, when we are in love? I’m still mulling over my own answer.