Manhattan Strip Clubs: Review, Pariah (Focus Features)
Defined as “a person without status, a rejected member of society, an outcast,” the titular character, played by Adepero Oduye, is a slight, boyish 17 year-old African-American woman named Alike (pronounced ah-lee-kay) who lives with her bickering parents and 15 year-old sister, Sharonda (Sahra Mellesse), in Brooklyn’s Ford Greene neighborhood. A good student, she enjoys writing poetry and is particularly expressive about butterflies breaking out of cocoons.
While her stern, strait-laced, suave police detective father, Arthur(Charles Parnell), is into denial, her conventional, devoutly Christian, upwardly mobile mother, Audrey (Kim Wayans), is eager to introduce Alike to a colleague’s prim-and-proper daughter, Bina (Aasha Davis), who attends the same public school. But feisty Alike realizes that she’s homosexual and is looking for a lesbian lover – with the support of her `butch’ best friend, Laura (Pernell Walker), who accompanies her to a gay women’s strip club where she attempts to wear a strap-on dildo and demonstrates her readiness to experiment in this underground society.