So this is a ’90s indie film, and it is an extremely ’90s indie film. The premise is that the main character, Cheryl (played by the writer/director of the movie, Cheryl Dunye) is a video store clerk and aspiring filmmaker, and she becomes obsessed with a (fictional) Black actress from 1930s movies who is credited only as “the watermelon woman,” and begins researching her life to make a documentary about her.

And so the movie is a mix of fictional Cheryl’s daily life, fake archival footage of the watermelon woman, and interviews and footage for the documentary film-within-the-film. It’s not quite as confusing as that makes it sound, but it’s definitely one of those movies that’s playing around a bit with the line between reality and fiction.

And so one notable thing is that the character Cheryl, like the director/writer Cheryl, is a lesbian, and the movie has a sex scene that became part of the whole NEA culture war thing back in the ’90s, with Republican politicians being all like “oh goodness me, why I never, we shouldn’t be spending money to make this filthy pornography.” Good times.

Anyway, though, when you’re like “oh, this is an important Black lesbian indie faux-documentary that excited political controversy,” it makes it sound like the movie is going to be extremely serious, but it’s not at all. Most of the movie is Cheryl interacting with her friends and lover in kinda lighthearted bantery ways, like if Clerks were made by someone who is extremely not Kevin Smith. And obviously it’s doing a lot more than that, too — it’s a movie by and about a Black lesbian whose subject is the suppressed cinematic history of Black women! — but it’s mostly doing it really lightly, just sort of observing things and not hammering them home like a Serious Message Movie might.

Good stuff, recommended.

(Also, fun fact, and the thing that reminded me that this was on my to-watch list — Dunye recently directed an episode of Lovecraft Country, “Strange Case.” That’s, uh, very different in tone.)