It has been a subdued year for movies, as theaters have remained closed in many parts of the United States due to the coronavirus pandemic. Film festivals have curtailed in-person events, and thus the annual New York Film Festival went virtual. The only public screenings were held in drive-ins in Queens and Brooklyn, but not in Manhattan, where the event’s presenter, Film at Lincoln Center, is based.

However, for the first time ever, viewers could remain at home anywhere in the country and within a matter of weeks catch up on the movies that have trickled down this year from all over the world—not to mention the bonus that virtual tickets were less expensive than the screenings at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall. (Note: there were time restrictions, and even in cyberspace, films sold out.) Gone at least for the time being were the chats in the queues where you could pick up precious intel on the lineup or the post-screening chatter comparing notes.

Despite the logistical restrictions, the festival began on a celebratory note, with Steve McQueen’s quasi-musical Lovers Rock, an episode from his upcoming anthology series Small Axe, five stand-alone, interconnected movies focusing on the West Indian experience in London, from the late 1960s to the mid-1980s. Wherever you view it, this opening night film is a pick-me-up, and one advantage of screening this at home is you can crank up the volume and dance along to your heart’s content without someone yelling at you to get out of the aisle. 

Small Axe is based on hundreds of interviews undertaken by McQueen and his team on the Black British experience. For Lovers Rock, the only fictional tale in the series, he and co-writer Courttia Newland based the main protagonist on McQueen’s churchgoing aunt, who would sneak out of her parents’ house on Saturdays to go out dancing. Here, a house party in 1980 is essentially the core character, though the camera follows churchgoer Martha (Amarah-Jae St. Aubyn) throughout the night, from the moment she sneaks out of the house to meet her friend Patty (Shaniquah Okwok). They set off to a birthday celebration in West London’s Ladbroke Grove for birthday girl Cynthia (Ellis George), who has cleared her living room of furniture and had a sound system hauled in. Attendees pay a small fee. Beer’s for sale, and goat curry simmers in the kitchen. 

The episode features one of the best playlists in any movie or TV show this year, heavy on late-’70s reggae. McQueen shapes his story of girl meets boy—Martha and Franklyn (Micheal Ward), a gentleman and mechanic—through the music, and so the soundtrack takes on the form of an audio mood ring. The eclectic and enveloping mix includes “He’s the Greatest Dancer” by Sister Sledge, Blondie’s “Sunday Girl,” and Carl Douglas’s “Kung Fu Fighting.” True, the lyrics and musical arrangement of the latter are problematic, but that dance anthem really gets the on-screen partying going even further.

In McQueen’s mapping out of the courtship among the young partiers, the women take to the dance floor early in the evening as the men stand by on the sidelines. Though the women might be on display, and fully aware of the men checking them out, they’re in their own world, having a great time. When a man later approaches a partner for a dance, he gently touches her elbow and lightly caresses her forearm all the way down to take hold of her hand. She either allows him to lead or pulls away. Later on as the party comes to a close and after some guests have paired off and disappeared, the men take to the floor dancing together as an act of camaraderie. 

Dozens of characters are introduced in the brief-but-just-right 68-minute running time, some glimpsed for a moment or in the background, and all move to the music in their own way. (Although this is definitely a straight single scene, it doesn’t preclude a surprise same-sex moment of affection.) Though Franklin’s courtship of Martha fills up McQueen’s dance card, the filmmaker focuses more on the interconnections of this group of friends, strangers, and potential lovers. He allows dance sequences to go on for an entire song and resists the urge to cut away to the goings-on in the rest of the house. The film takes its editing cues from its uninhibited cast, giving many in the ensemble a moment to shine in the period-accurate choreography by Coral Messam while Shabier Kirchner’s nimble camera roams in the middle of the dance floor.

Of the three films from the series screened at the festival, Lovers Rock is a rowdy respite from the more forthrightly political Mangrove and the somber Red, White and Blue. All are invigorating.

Lovers Rock will begin streaming on Amazon Prime on Friday, November 27.