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Boots Riley’s communist heist film

Boots Riley’s Communist Heist Film

Yes, it even has Marxist teleporters.

A still from I Love Boosters.

If I asked you to describe what a communist movie looks like, you might think back to Soviet propaganda posters, to Sergei Eisenstein’s montage theory, to black-and-white movies screened only in film class, to brutalist buildings all bearing the same look, and to a desaturated aesthetic that screams austerity. You might not think of Keke Palmer squatting in a vacant but decked-out chicken restaurant in the San Francisco Bay Area.

You might not think of miniature chase scenes, stop-motion sequences, teleportation devices, vibrant monochromatic garments, a carnivalesque Tune-Yards score, or a tilted condo building like a Leaning Tower of Pisa for the Bay Area’s most tasteless. But Boots Riley’s second film, I Love Boosters, is kaleidoscopic, refracting the director’s radical ideas into a new kind of communist filmmaking.

Like his debut film, Sorry to Bother You, and his TV miniseries I’m a Virgo, I Love Boosters amps up the absurdities of everyday exploitation to point the way to a future in which more workers embrace the possibility of a successful struggle to claw back the wealth that has been stolen from them by business owners and billionaires. More than montage, Riley’s filmmaking feels like collage. It’s not trying to be perfectly clean or seamless. Its vision is deeply human and yet also refuses to hold back or moderate its scope.

Though it can feel like Riley is preaching to the choir, his real goal is to show people that they’ve been humming anti-capitalist tunes all along, even if they haven’t learned the words yet. His version of bringing communism to the masses is so bombastic and crammed with diversions that viewers might be inclined to forgive how overtly the film delivers its lessons. In practice, Riley’s depiction of the splendors and terrors and contradictions of living under capitalism’s thumb might not coalesce neatly, but for many, the message will be worth the mess.

I Love Boosters begins with a regular night out for Palmer’s character, an aspiring fashion designer and shameless hustler named Corvette. To a backdrop of vibey R&B, Corvette sashays her way through a nightclub until she lays eyes on a sleekly dressed man. Soon, she is pointedly asking him about his shoe size and taking him to a private room she keeps nearby. But Corvette isn’t looking for a hookup; she’s out to make a sale. She is a booster, meaning that she “boosts” items of name-brand clothing from fancy stores and sells them at a discount to people who would otherwise not be able to afford the flashy attire.

Corvette and her two co-conspirators (and closest friends), Sade and Mariah, aren’t exactly shoplifters. Instead, they........

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