For Colored Girls (2010): United States – directed by Tyler Perry
Rated R by the MPAA – contains strong language, domestic violence, sexual content, sexual violence
Tyler Perry’s first foray into straight drama is an interesting mix. I’m not familiar with “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf,” Ntozake Shange’s seminal choreo-poem often considered a cultural marker. I do know many African American communities were up in arms when it was announced Perry would be adapting it, and Oprah and other influential people were brought in to consult. The play, an assortment of poetry expressing the lives of seven African American women, is fluid and impressionistic, I’m told. It lacks the hard details necessary for a successful translation into film, but this very characteristic made it so powerful on stage.
Perry has worked many of the themes from the poem into a screenplay, adding characters and settings in an attempt to make it real. His version has nine women whose lives are all interconnected, like a facile version of Magnolia [review here].