The Queen Bee of an elite Pennsylvania boarding school is seeking a protégée in a new trailer for Tayarisha Poe’s “Selah and The Spades.” Now in her senior year, Selah Summers (Lovie Simone, “Greenleaf”) is determined to ensure her legacy. She’s considering Paloma (Celeste O’Connor, “Wetlands”), a sophomore, as her successor.
Wearing Selah’s crown comes with risks. Selah’s crew supplies their peers with illegal alcohol and pills, and the trailer hints that the school’s administrators are suspicious of them.
“Do they ever talk about the girl who came before you?” a classmate asks Paloma. “She didn’t work out,” she hints.
“I’d say the first half of the film feels like being a teenager in the midst of an endless spring afternoon when your homework is done, your clothes are fresh from the dryer, and you’ve got a fresh glass of no-pulp orange juice nearby at all times,” Poe told us. “The second half of the film is like that feeling you have when you are afraid that you’ll sleep through your alarm before a long and stressful day, so the whole night you wake up every 20 minutes in a panic to check the time on your phone.”
The writer-director continued, “It’s the story of kids who live away from home and thus have created their own set of rules to survive, and thrive, in this fictional microcosm of society that is The Haldwell School.”
“Selah and The Spades” marks Poe’s feature debut. The pic, which made its world premiere at Sundance 2019, hits Amazon Prime Video April 17.
