Young Soul Rebels

It's the summer of 1977, the week of the Queen's Silver Jubilee, a high point of pre-Thatcher British nationalist fervor. In the poor East End of London, a couple of young black soul rebels, Caz (Sesay) and Chris (Nonyela) operate a pirate radio station out of the back of a garage where they spin the funky grooves of groups like Parliament and Funkadelic. The young, mostly white punk movement is in its heyday and racist, hate-mongering skinheads are meddling in everyone's business. Add to this highly charged picture of racial relations a further layer of sexual politics. Chris, a mulatto who is pretty boy straight, and Caz, who is gay butch, have been best friends since childhood and though the sexual tensions between them are minimal yet potent, the politics of difference surround them everywhere. They are also beginning to have some disagreement regarding the direction of their radio program, Soul Patrol. Chris begins to explore the possibilities of more mainstream commercial radio with the help of his new girlfriend Tracy (Okonedo), a production assistant at Metro Radio. Meanwhile, Caz, through his emerging attraction to a white punk named Billibud (Durr) who is involved in staging the counter-cultural “Fuck the Jubilee” celebration, gains some firsthand experience with multiculturalist values and goals. On top of all this, the movie piles on a murder mystery plot concerning a soul boy killed in the park while cruising – maybe because he was black, maybe because he was gay. The mystery element is the weakest part of Young Soul Rebels. The murderer is evident early on, the suspense it tries to build feels strained and artificial and the narrative-driven aspects of the whodunit are almost distracting. Yet, praised be the movie that has so much going on that details such as plot seem like unecessary encumbrances. What Young Soul Rebels does well, it does extremely well. Exciting to look at, the cinematography fluidly canvasses all the various social situations with equal mixtures of choreography and documentation that unfailingly locate the authenticity of each scene. Director Julien has a remarkable capacity for entwining all the various socio-political strands of the story in one all-encompassing web that neither confines nor restrains its reach. His depiction of various groups (be they white, black, gay, straight, punk, soul boys, National Fronters or whatever) defies stereotypes and predictability. Moreover, what sustains Young Soul Rebels is the thrill of the music -- the reminder that there's strength in the groove and power in doing things for yourself.