A. V. Rockwell’s maternal drama won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2023 Sundance Film Fest, in January.
The film was released by Focus Features in March to great critical acclaim, and it is now streaming.
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Theatrical release poster
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Rockwell opens A Thousand and One, which is set in the late 1990s, at Rikers, where her protagonist Inez is serving out the remainder of an 18-month prison sentence.
A scene of the 22-year-old applying makeup on another inmate cuts to a shot of the mother roaming the streets of her old neighborhood, claiming back pay from her job and looking for her son, Terry (Aaron Kingsley Adetola).
Their reunion is a bittersweet affair that ends with Inez “kidnapping” Terry from a foster home in an effort to create a new, healthier life in Harlem.
Rockwell’s screenplay discloses bits of Inez’s past, often at random, to contextualize the character’s behavior. The young mother had spent time in foster care herself.
But throughout she is strong enough to masks her fragility and vulnerability with an iron exterior, driven to find a home more than anything.
The revelations may complicate our perception of Inez, but they don’t negate our understanding of her.
Narrative Structure
In 1994, hairdresser and convicted thief Inez de la Paz is released from Rikers Island and returns to the Brooklyn of her former shelter, where she sees her son Terry with other children from his foster home.
When Terry is hospitalized after trying to escape from the home, Inez secretly visits him. His earliest memory is how Inez abandoned him on a street corner when he was two years old.
Visibly shaken after he accuses her of repeated abandonment, Inez asks if Terry wants to come live with her. When he says yes, Inez impulsively abducts him from the hospital, escaping to her childhood neighborhood of Harlem.
Inez and Terry stay at a variety of homes until she saves up enough money from a new job at a nursing home to afford an apartment.
By 2001, Inez still lives in the same apartment with Terry though her marriage to Lucky is strained due to his long absences and infidelities. Inez fails to reconcile with Lucky, but he affirms his love for and support of Terry.
The last sequence is set in 2005, Lucky is dying of cancer, Terry prepares for college, while their new landlord attempts to drive them out of the apartment.
In the tale’s most shockingly melodramatic moment, Inez reveals to Terry that she is not his biological mother, putting him in another home. Terry flees the home, and after Inez’ best friend Kim invites him to live with her, returns to the apartment, finding Inez collecting her belongings.
She finally confesses that she is the woman who found him on the street and treated him like her own son. Terry affirms his love for her as a mother, but the two separate again. In the very last scene, entering a taxi to uncertain future, Inez promises Terry: “this isn’t goodbye.”
Credits:
Directed, written by A.V. Rockwell
Written by A.V. Rockwell
Produced by Eddie Vaisman, Julia Lebedev, Lena Waithe, Rishi Rajani, Brad Weston
Cinematography Eric K. Yue
Edited by Sabine Hoffman, Kristan Sprague
Music by Gary Gunn
Production companies: Sight Unseen, Hillman Grad Productions, Makeready
Distributed by Focus Features (US)
Universal Pictures (International)
Release dates: Jan 22, 2023 (Sundance); March 31, 2023 (US)
Running time: 116 minutes
Box office $3.5 million
