Parents' Guide to Weathering

Weathering is an absorbing 20 minutes of film, designed to vent frustrations. Viewers will share the frustration that Gemina (convincingly portrayed by Louder) feels with male doctors who don't listen to women. In this case, it's a White male doctor and a female Black patient, probably exponentially exaggerating the problem. But Gemina's own mother is just as frustrating and dismissive of her daughter. Embodied by the powerful, elegant, and haughty Woodard, Mom tells her daughter all the ways in which she could have averted disaster if only she'd listened to her mother. Mom is glad the baby's father is gone, too, offering no sympathy and no solace to a clearly depressed daughter.

Then, as if to add the crowning cliché in the all-time list of ways in which women are not listened to, a male friend comes over and, instead of comforting Gemina, comes on to her despite her repeated and explicit directives to stop. Her dreams about being beaten by a faceless stranger may be the metaphor for how it feels to be Black and female in a White, male-dominated world. Something's always coming at you and it can be difficult and exhausting to keep ducking.