‘She’ Is Priority in ‘Gotta Have It’

For a small-frame movie made on the cheap, Spike Lee’s “She’s Gotta Have It” had big impact. Besides heralding Lee as the Great Black Hope in American filmmaking, it tossed a catch phrase into the hip culture.

I was visiting friends in New York City for a few weeks shortly after the picture’s 1986 release, and more folks than would now care to admit it were parroting the “Please baby, please baby, baby, baby, please!” line that was the trademark for Mars, Lee’s character. (Lee also wrote, directed and edited the film.)

Mars, the skinny joker ready to beg for sex, used the phrase to great effect, but it’s really Nola’s movie. She’s the liberated, African American earth mother/man eater at the center of “She’s Gotta Have It,” which screens Friday night as the second installment in UC Irvine’s “Standing in a Different Light: No Longer Silent and Invisible, a Woman Seizes her Moments” series.

Nola (Tracy Camila Johns) has three men, and that pleases her just fine. They’re wild about her, but Nola isn’t sure which one she’s wild about. Maybe all three. Maybe none. One thing she’s sure about is sex. And variety. She’s gotta have it, baby.

That pretty much gives you the plot, as Nola moves from Greer (John Canada Terrell), a self-celebrating actor, to Jamie (Tommy Redmond Hicks), the mature, logical choice for her, to Mars, desperate young fool.

The movie often strings out the three-pronged story line in sloppy ways, but it always tweaks our notions of sexual stereotyping. Through Nola, we see just how unfettered a women can be when interpreting her erotic identity.

In this, Lee’s first movie (if you don’t count “Joe’s Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads,” done while he was a film student at New York University), Lee reveals his ability to turn apparently simple situations into streetwise comic opera.

The language is hip and jivey, and the grainy black-and-white imagery has a loose quality. Even when Lee fails to pull everything together--some of the resolutions are prosaic--”She’s Gotta Have It” remains fresh.

Men may squirm a bit because Lee’s male characters come across as mostly shallow and aren’t as enlightened as Nola.

All three are true believers in the double standard, feeling it’s reasonable for them to play around but almost uncivilized for Nola to do the same.

Even Jamie, who is less foolish than the preening Greer and gabby Mars, shows how unhinged Nola’s freewheeling attitudes leave the trio.

His stable facade cracks near the movie’s end, and he startles us with an act of violence. Nola has to pay for her liberation, and Jamie is the one who shows her the price.

It’s the movie’s one ugly scene, almost out of place in this otherwise amusing look at citified relationships.

* What: Spike Lee’s “She’s Gotta Have It.”

* When: Friday, April 14, at 7 and 9 p.m.

* Where: The UC Irvine Student Center Crystal Cove Auditorium.

* Whereabouts: Take the San Diego (405) Freeway to Jamboree Road and head south to Campus Drive and take a left. Turn right on Bridge Road and take it into the campus.

* Wherewithal: $2 to $4.

* Where to call: (714) 824-5588.

MORE SPECIAL SCREENINGS

Lianna

(R) John Sayles’ 1983 film about a woman who, questioning the sacrifices she has made for her unhappy marriage, goes back to school and falls in love with her female teacher. It screens April 21 at 7 and 9 p.m. at the UCI Student Center Crystal Cove Auditorium. Sponsored by the UCI Film Society. $4 general admission, $3 for seniors and $2 for students. (714) 824-5588.