Directed by: Lee Daniels
Starring: Andra Day, Garrett Hedlund, Trevante Rhodes, Natasha Lyonne, Leslie Jordan, Evan Ross, Rob Morgan
The United States vs. Billie Holiday has a very good performance at its center searching for a movie worthy of it. The film is a slog punctuated by Andra Day's renditions of some of Holiday's signature songs. A singer herself, Day has cited Holiday as a major influence. She was born to play Lady Day and has been justly rewarded with an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.
The story focuses on FBI Narcotics Chief Harry Anslinger's (Hedlund) attempts to throw Holiday in prison following her singing of the controversial song Strange Fruit, which depicted lynchings and racial intolerance. Anslinger targeted Holiday for her widely known battles with drugs, even assigning Black FBI agents to ingratiate themselves to her. One such agent is Jimmy Fletcher (Rhodes), who at first poses as an adoring fan before setting her up for a sting. However, Fletcher stays in the picture anyway by falling in love with Holiday. Like many of the men in The United States vs. Billie Holiday, Fletcher appears and disappears so often we aren't sure what his relationship is with her at any given time.
Holiday's relationships with other men are also not clearly defined. One who was a boyfriend in the beginning vanishes for a stretch before reemerging as her husband. Actress Tallulah Bankhead (Lyonne) also appears as Holiday's hinted-at lover, but Lyonne only appears in a few scenes before leaving the movie for good. In the middle of the relationship nonsense are gratuitous scenes of heroin use with blood spurting out of the vein for good measure.
Andra Day plays Holiday with a hopeful, trusting spirit. She isn't a diva. She craves love almost as much as she loves drugs. She uses the drugs as an attempt to fill of loveless void inside of her which will never go away. Day gives us as intimate a portrait as she can under the weight of the excess she is surrounded by. Characters move in and out of Holiday's life with such fluidity we can't keep track. The pacing is sloooow. The pall of drug use is interrupted by Day belting out Holiday songs in their entirety. The movie soon goes like this: Song, drug use, prison, song, drug use, and so on. It's all so boring. There isn't much more we learn about Billie Holiday than we knew going in.
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