Monk (Jeffrey Wright) is instructed to take a vacation after a student complained about his behavior and choice of curriculum texts in a collegiate literary class.  Reluctantly, he returns home to Boston and stays with his sister, Lisa (Tracee Ellis Ross), who is taking care of their aging mother, Agnes (Leslie Uggams).  He uses this opportunity away from teaching to work on his next novel, but he is discouraged when Arthur (John Ortiz), his agent, has continuing trouble trying to sell the book.  One night, a little buzzed, a little desperate, and a little more than a little annoyed at the state of the industry, Monk assumes the pseudonym Stagg R. Leigh and writes his fictional memoir growing up in the hood, chronicling a life of drugs and violence that culminated in a federal conviction and time served.  The book sells instantly, gains immediate acclaim, and try as he may to put the genie back in the bottle, Monk quickly finds himself balancing his own affairs and this new identity which he crafted for himself. 

For his first foray into film from a career built in television, Cord Jefferson writes and directs American Fiction, an adaptation of Percival Everett’s novel, Erasure.  It premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival where it was awarded the People’s Choice for Best Feature ahead of its theatrical release courtesy of MGM.  The 117-minute film is tackling a lot of social issues surrounding representation and who gets to tell whose story with a further tangent of whose story then becomes the definitive.  All of this gets worked through by Monk while also contending with a family drama that forces him to reevaluate and redefine his own identity. 

Monk is somewhat of a difficult character, especially one to put as a lead in a debut feature.  Thankfully, Wright is a very tender and nuanced actor who finds opportunities to show Monk’s simmering rage against the industry in which he works while also fostering empathy with the audience as a man tired of being beaten down by the machine.  The script asks a lot from Wright who occupies just about every scene in the film, and it requires Monk to be both a thorny personality and an everyman.  To Wright’s credit, he plays each facet of Monk with unique qualities, but the script has a hard time bridging these various story lines so the performance comes off a little disjointed through no real fault of the actor. 

Jefferson’s television roots are apparent here, and while the film does not look like a made-for-tv movie, it is shot and paced like a television show.  Thankfully, it is a good show and audiences will enjoy their time spent with this family, but it is so steeped in tragedy that it seems rather cruel.  Lisa passes away shortly after her introduction and the immediate chemistry which Ross and Wright had is noticeably missing for the remainder of the film.  Agnes’ health begins to deteriorate and Clifford (Sterling K. Brown), Monk’s brother, is trying to balance his sexuality which is not entirely accepted by his mother.  It is enough of a drama to support a story on its own, but because it is just a fraction of what American Fiction is interested in, we only get rushed portions of the larger picture. 

Instead, the film is much more interested in following Monk as he grapples with his crisis of identity.  It is an interesting thread, and the film brings up some very informed arguments, but it has a very difficult time presenting its argument in an engaging way.  Monk is selected as a member of the jury to name the New England Book Association’s annual Literary Award along with Sinatra Golden (Issa Rae), one of his contemporaries that he feels writes in a way that caters to what the white audience will expect a black story to be.  The success of her novel is what led him to create Stagg, and Stagg’s novel, “My Pafology” which was later renamed to “Fuck” was a parody of Sintara’s own novel, “We’s Lives In Da Ghetto.” The two have some contentious conversations back and forth as Jefferson delivers Everett’s thesis, but as these two actors sit across the table from each other eating lunch or bickering over a zoom call, all momentum is driven to an immediate halt. 

Jefferson’s film, which is poking fun at the diversity quotas which various institutions scrambled to meet is also working in the tradition of Spike Lee, specifically Bamboozled (2000) and makes a good companion piece with Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You (2018).  It works well as a satire, but the difficult part about satire is that the humor can show no cracks or the whole thing falls apart.  For much of American Fiction, Wright is able to make the jokes land with the biting acidity required when condemning a culture, but the off-balance script makes it hard to always know when Jefferson is operating in this satiric mode or when he is shooting it as a family drama.  This often stifles laughter in the audience, and what does find its way out is unsure and uncomfortable, not because of the subject matter – which is the sign of a deadly accurate satire – but because of the context of the delivery.  Chips and cracks aside, American Fiction is still an enjoyable film supported by strong performances, and while its messaging is purposefully blunt, something the film even jokes about given the title of Stagg’s novel, Jefferson loses his way in the final act as he tries to do a little too much with what he set up and that soft landing, divisive in its deviation of tone and expectations that defined the film, unfortunately, weakens all that came before it.