June/July 1998

If Love Jones was an attempt to counter negative images of black love with pretty-picture romance, Hav Plenty is the flip side: a raw and savagely funny indie that upends typical notions of "positivity" and "realness." The "Plenty" of the title is Lee Plenty (writer-director Christopher Cherot), an aspiring novelist/slacker; the "Hav" is Havilland Savage (Chenoa Maxwell), the bourgie media exec Lee loved semisecretly since college. Taking a trip down to Havilland's D.C. digs for New Year's, Lee spends several days smirking at the black corporate set. He's damaged, downwardly mobile goods but still temporarily captures the fancy of women with perfectly tweezed eyebrows and high-siddity R&B tastes.

The film is a total boho-boy fairy tale with an unexpected edge: Lee dishes out thinly veiled contempt when it comes to Hav's foibles (she's dating an oily lover-man singer with a Top 10 hit), but he's still unable to resist as she slowly wraps him around a well-manicured pinkie. Hav and her girls are completely unlike the Strong Sisters and dick-hungry freaks you'll find in most films by and about black people, even if they are seen from Plenty's wholly male point of view.

Picked up by Miramax, this low-budget gem has taken on a new audience-friendly ending, but credit director Cherot for finding a creative way to meet the demands of both art and industry. Lee Plenty discovers that getting what you want doesn't always equal getting what you need.