Premature

On the surface, it’s an indie coming-of-age romance set during a hazy Harlem summer. Just months before leaving for college, Ayanna (Zora Howard) meets a man a few years older, Isaiah (Joshua Boone), who just moved to New York to become a music producer. Against Hudson River sunsets and seductive, sequestered moments in a sound studio, they bond over songwriting and poetry, and soon find themselves surrendering to an all-consuming relationship. It’s all new to Ayanna, who loses her inhibitions—sexually, emotionally, and creatively, as her poems begin to finally flow freely. She doesn’t realize she’s in love until she starts to hurt.

The hurt is where the story begins to depart from expectations. Told from Ayanna’s point of view, she sharply articulates the ache she suddenly feels: when she begins to suspect he’s reconnected with an old flame; when she’s with him and everything seems okay; when they’re in the throws of passionate sex.

Age is an undercurrent, and it raises the question of why 17 is considered the line in the sand. Ayanna sits at the precipice of independence, college, official adulthood.

While Isaiah’s actual age isn’t specified, he acknowledges the significance of their gap at one point, dismissing her friends as being “so young” after they challenge what they think is his sexist point of view. But Ayanna sees his reference to their age as a reason why he seems to be pushing her away.

The story takes a turn when she’s abruptly forced to confront just how young she is, and the consequences of all her lost inhibitions, the whole summer of too much, too soon.

Premature explores “the very real ways that love heals, that it transforms, that it tests and changes us.” — Nijla Mu ‘min, Shadow and Act  Full review