Selah and the Spades Is a Stylish Debut about Every Teen’s Struggle for Power

Tayarisha Poe’s visually rich feature debut, Selah and the Spades, exudes a painstaking commitment to style in every frame, prop and set piece. It centers around a senior pep-squad leader and straight-A student, Selah (Lovie Simone), who attends the fictitious co-ed Haldwell boarding school in Pennsylvania, where the children of the wealthy and prestigious are embroiled in more than just school stress and crushes.

Five factions rule the school’s student body, each with a particular vice or specialization. Selah and the Spades control the illicit drug trade that sustains the many students of Haldwell. You also have the Bobbies, led by blond theater enthusiast Bobby (Ana Mulvoy-Ten), who organize every after-dark party in basements and hideaways. The Skins oversee a gambling ring, mostly related to posh sports activities. The Tarits will write you an A+ paper for a nominal fee. The Prefects, run by non-descript Two Tom (Evan Roe), ensure that the headmaster and other authority figures are none the wiser.

Though the film deals with such pertinent teenage themes of loneliness, perfectionism and the unrelenting sway of one’s demanding family—in part due to it being loosely based on Poe’s own adolescence, drawing from her high school boarding school experiences—Selah and the Spades exists in a world so uniquely its own, as pretty as it is chilling. The privileged, insular bubble of boarding school rings true, but a Wes Anderson-inspired color palette saturates scenes of Scorsese-esque beatings by moonlight. Glimpses of young adulthood from a uniquely adult perspective blur the line between the two.

Selah and the Spades traffics more in procedural mob genre tropes as opposed to soapy teen drama cliches: The plot largely centers around Selah befriending Paloma (Celeste O’Connor), a younger new student she is eyeing as a potential successor to lead the Spades. There’s also extortion, rat rumors and the ever-looming threat of war among rival factions. And that’s not even counting the hum around a mysterious former student named Teela, a suspected BFF of Selah’s who’s since vanished.

But comparing the teen anti-heroes to the likes of Tony Soprano and Henry Hill ignores what is at the crux of Selah and the Spades: not the struggle to maintain power, but the burning desire to have any power at all. At the end of the day, these characters have to answer to someone, whether it is their parents—who in Selah’s case completely control her future collegiate prospects—or the headmaster, who can end their education at Haldwell at the first sniff of trouble.

This struggle for autonomy is crucial for Selah, and she feels most strongly about acquiring it across gender lines. As the head of the pep squad, Selah flexes her team’s collective authority over their image, reflected in everything from their choreography to their uniform.