Film Review: Ava DuVernay’s ‘Middle of Nowhere’ Resonates by Valuing Truth Over Melodrama

Rating: 4.0/5.0

CHICAGO – Ava DuVernay’s Sundance award-winning drama “Middle of Nowhere” is a confident, engaging drama strengthened by genuine, moving performances, particularly the stunningly good one at its center from Emayatzy Corinealdi. The movie sometimes falters due to some melodramatic, on-the-nose dialogue, but there’s an honesty, compassion, and genuine quality here that’s too often missing from adult dramas. It’s a striking debut.

Like so many Sundance dramas, “Middle of Nowhere” tells a relatively simple story but does so with enough artistic intent and truth of character that the common story that it tells becomes uncommonly good in its telling. There are strong performances across the board here but the film belongs to the stunning Emayatzy Corinealdi, who is in nearly every scene and imbues her performance with the kind of believability that is lacking from too many films like this one. I kept marveling at the sense of realism in “Middle of Nowhere” and that sense comes back to the work done by Corinealdi.

Read Brian Tallerico’s full review of “Middle of Nowhere” in our reviews section.

She stars as Ruby, a woman struggling with a husband named Brian (David Oyelowo) who is doing time behind bars. She visits him regularly and works hard to pay his legal bills but he’s getting increasingly distant. He seems cold at their meetings, doesn’t tell her about everything going on behind bars and seems to be actively pushing Ruby away. And who’s to say that she shouldn’t take that push? When a revelation makes the move to fully separate even more enticing, Ruby is faced with a tough decision. When do you give up on someone for your own good? Or do you ride out the tough times for someone you love? Can you forgive a man behind bars when you can’t even touch him?

Continue reading for Brian Tallerico’s full “Middle of Nowhere” review.

Middle of Nowhere
Photo credit: Participant Media