The art of cinema allows a filmmaker to toy with the conventions of cinematography and narrative structure. It’s not a necessary element in any film per se, but films that play with genre or medium are considered more experimental. A tightly calibrated narrative with a pointed message doesn’t need to also challenge our understanding of a movie. If done poorly, unorthodox rule-breaking can destroy the mood and feel of a film, interfering with and derailing the story.
For some creatives, play is an anathema, the antithesis of proper filmmaking. But director, poet and musician Boots Riley has an opposing thesis; in art, play within the medium is essential. The synthesis of this notion is “I Love Boosters.” A film that takes advantage of nonconformity to deliver something profound, obscene and deeply optimistic about the future.
Set primarily in the Bay Area, “I Love Boosters” follows Corvette (Keke Palmer), a down-on-her-luck woman trying to make ends meet by working as a “booster’’ — a shoplifter that specifically targets high fashion brands — as she wages a guerilla campaign against fashion mogul Christie Smith (Demi Moore) in order to end her cruel and exploitative fashion conglomerate. However, this is a highly truncated description that doesn’t capture the story entirely. At it’s core, “I Love Boosters” is a dense work with layered meaning baked into every scene.
There are many “blink and you’ll miss it” moments: bits and gags happening in the background — like a series of news reports airing headlines like “crying mom demands more police” or the bizarre outfits the main characters manage to pull off. The film is a surreal work, leaning into slapstick and embracing a cartoonish nature. When Corvette infiltrates Christie’s high-rise home, she quickly finds herself in trouble, as every room is slanted 15 degrees downward. In order to crawl up to the door to escape, she tries a number of different strategies, including running in mid-air a la “Looney Tunes”-style.
As Corvette becomes more involved in her campaign against Christie, the surreal elements ramp up. She’s followed by supernatural forces, and it remains unclear if these are within her mind or actually manifesting in her world. What is reality within the setting begins to fog, and you start to question your understanding of the rules that govern the world of “I Love Boosters.” Despite the insanity, the strong narrative makes the action easy to follow, demonstrating the film’s clarity of vision.
What aids in making the film eccentric is its inspired cinematography. “I Love Boosters” looks and feels incredible as a film, with every scene and shot working towards making the movie feel unearthly. Christine’s stores are all monocolor, and those dominant hues heavily impact the mood of each scene. There is something a little “off” about the depiction of the Bay Area in the movie: outside shots feel slightly tinted and the hills that define San Francisco are — through skillful camera work — made steeper as Corvette and her fellow boosters drive up and down them.
Moreover, a lot of impressive camera techniques are used to communicate emotion. In high-stress moments for Corvette, the camera dolly zooms toward her face as the background moves closer, before a quick cut to a scene with her against a wall. This is a sudden but delightfully effective way to transition between scenes while illustrating to the audience how the characters feel.
This is just one aspect of the mise-en-scene that “I Love Boosters” excels at. The construction of its settings, the unique high-fashion outfits that the boosters wear and even stop-motion animation work to make “I Love Boosters” a film you truly can’t take your eyes off of.
What stuck with me long after watching, however, was not the artistry of the film but rather the vision of the future that “I Love Boosters” put forth. As a self-described communist, Boots Riley’s works are just as focused on social commentary as they are comedy. His underlying philosophy is at the root of the unorthodoxy within all of his work; the breaking of assumed conventions helps him deliver his message about society.
Fundamentally, “I Love Boosters” is a movie about class struggle, and the conflict between Corvette and Christie is a natural outgrowth of this depiction. The film is dialectical, both overtly (there is a machine that performs dialectics) but also in a way that maps onto our world and society. Ultimately, what Corvette and Christie represent is a blown-up and exaggerated version of our own battle with the oppressive and exploitative upper class, and Boots Riley is highly optimistic that we, the working class, will prevail. More than just a hilarious or brilliantly made film, “I Love Boosters” is a work brimming with hope and optimism about our ability to work together to improve our lives, and finding community and solidarity amongst ourselves.
Daily Arts Writer Nicolas Eisenberg can be reached at niceisen@umich.edu.
