Writer/director/editor/animator/actor/lover Terence Nance spent six years on An Oversimplification of Her Beauty, the real-life story of his (unrequited? reciprocated? by turns both and neither?) love for close friend (girlfriend? lover? otherwise undefinable compatriot?) Namik that is anything but simple. The feature-length film incorporates live-action footage and animated elements in combining an earlier short film on the same subject (How Would You Feel, 2006) with an hour’s worth of new developments and further explanations about the complicated nuances of the movement (or stagnation) of a platonic relationship to a romantic one, or to nothing at all. The film is supremely self-aware, using title slides and a velvety-voiced narrator to identify itself and every turn of its tight, dense and highly-organized narrative structure. It loops in content and theme, repeating footage and sections of narration, overlapping and weaving loose ends independent of time and sequence. Nance cites Louise Erdrich and William Faulkner as literary inspiration for form and content, both of whom are implicitly and explicitly obvious in the final product. Afrocentric perspectives on time and the nature of feeling and relationship give a unique voice, and the main characters are “played” by Terence and Namik themselves. The footage, some of which is interview material, may be staged, but all of the content is intensely personal. An Oversimplification of Her Beauty mirrors in beautiful, abstract form the intricacy of its content.
