Five factions run the underground life of Haldwell School, a prestigious east coast boarding school. At the head of the most powerful faction – The Spades – sits Selah Summers, walking the fine line between being feared and loved.
The Haldwell school, an elite boarding school lead by Headmaster Banton (Jesse Williams) appears to have a tight grip on its diverse selection of students. When preparing incoming students for their residency, he wants to make them well aware that his Pennsylvania institution is pristine and no attempt to destroy its reputation will be tolerated. Unbeknownst to him, Sela (Lovie Simone), a student with many selfish talents, has organized the entire student population into a set of factions that have further categorized themselves into five groups of regulatory divergents. While the members are mostly tight-lipped about their duties, their council meetings are modern-day lynchings where Sela, the most powerful and aggressive of the bunch, finds herself losing trust among her most loyal followers while being hung out to dry due to her latest actions which include harboring knowledge of former member Telah’s suspicious disappearance. Sela’s group, “The Spades,” which seem to be the upper echelon of the factions, is constantly challenging “The Skins,” “The Bobbys,” “The Prefects” and the remaining faction to give Sela yet another chance to prove herself worthy of leadership.
The factions, outside of gaining joy from predicting student behaviors, seem to get their ultimate source of pleasure from running a covert drug and illegal alcohol operation where a ledger of its business model seems to be its most prized possession. Sela, who is a senior, operates unapologetically with her right-hand man Maxxie (Jharrel Jerome) by her side until Maxxie’s attention is diverted by his new girlfriend. As Sela begins to lose her grasp of Maxxie, she begins to focus her attention on Paloma (Celeste O’Connor), a sophomore photographer who doesn’t seem to have an inkling of disruptive behavior in her soul. As Sela becomes more intrigued by Paloma’s laid-back personality, she edges closer to the idea of befriending her and recruiting Paloma to become a Spade. Shortly afterward, when the ledger starts having questionable entries, Maxxie is suspected as the culprit and Sela decides that part of Paloma’s induction involves doing harm to Maxxie. Paloma begins to distance herself while trying to teach Sela lessons about friendship and acceptance and when Maxxie turns up after suffering from a beatdown, Paloma learns that not only was Sela responsible for it, but she was also told by the other factions that Sela was responsible for the previous member’s drug-induced accident. When the factions are exposed for their behavior at Haldwell, the senior prom is canceled and when the factions set up a council to discuss their future, Paloma comes up with a grand idea to have the seniors host their own offsite prom and all are in agreement to work together to make it happen. When everything goes better than planned, Sela realizes that Paloma has become more powerful than her own insecurities can handle, and she comes up with a near-terminal plan to remind Paloma who will always be in control.
In her feature debut, writer-director Tayarisha Poe has done an excellent job of bringing to light the complex realities of what modern-day youth are dealing with in their search for purpose and acceptance. The power struggles ultimately result in major gains for the strong and major losses for the weak who thrive on belonging. Even at an adult’s greatest attempt to set the goal of intolerance, there is always the rule of peer pressure that forces to be reckoned with amongst our youth. “Selah and The Spades” is a collision of peer pressure and fraternization that forces human nature to show both its surface and underlining in all situations. Amazon Films is great to acknowledge its presence!
Available on Amazon Prime Video April 17th
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