Review of The Last Black Man in San Francisco

Bleak, beautiful, slow film about gentrification and alienation. The main protagonist is a young black man who is more or less homeless - he's couch surfing at the house of a slightly older friend, who in turn lives with his dad, and fantasizes that he's a playwright. There are other purposeless young black men hanging about on the street corner, not quite menacing, not quite friends. The central character is obsessed with a beautiful gothic mansion that his family once seem to have occupied, though they may have been squatting there illegally - it's not entirely clear. His father is a frequent nomadic squatter, and the house's formal occupant herself loses the house when her mother dies and she has to split the inheritance with her sister - giving the young man a chance to move in for a while and play at living there.

It's depressing, but worth sitting through.

Watched on BBC iPlayer.