Rethinking Prince’s “Under the Cherry Moon”

Prince’s Under the Cherry Moon has a reputation as an overblown flop, a ham-fisted and dumb flick that served as one of the artist’s most public failures. Not many people have actually seen it, though. The 1986 film didn’t have much of a DVD release, isn’t on BluRay and hasn’t appeared on any streaming services. For most of the 30 years since its release, Under the Cherry Moon has been pretty hard to see, so its crappy rep has gone largely unchallenged.
With Prince’s death, however, there’s been a surge of interest in his work. A recent (packed) midnight screening of Under the Cherry Moon convinced me that it’s time to reassess the much-maligned movie. I’m here to tell you that it’s actually Prince’s best film. Of course, most people will automatically name Purple Rain as the best Prince movie. After all, it was a huge worldwide hit filled with amazing musical performances. It was the movie that made Prince a household name. Having recently rewatched it, though, I can safely say that it’s really not that great of a film.
The story is a threadbare rags-to-riches tale of the sort that’s been seen hundreds of times. The acting is almost uniformly awful, with Apollonia’s stilted line readings the worst of a bad bunch. The fact that everyone is basically playing themselves makes the acting seem that much worse. The only good performances in the film belong to Morris Day and Jerome Benton, whose natural charisma and chemistry overcome the constraints of their material. The cinematography is nothing to write home about, with hardly a memorable shot throughout.
Purple Rain only really comes alive during the musical numbers, when Prince and The Time are allowed to dance away from the hackneyed story and do their thing. Of course, Prince’s on-stage performances are so amazing and electric that they end up being the only parts of the film you really remember. Well, that and Apollonia jumping topless into a body of water that “ain’t Lake Minnetonka.” Purple Rain was a hit because Prince was an incredible performer, not because it’s a great movie.
Purple Rain’s huge success gave Prince the cache to do whatever he wanted for his next film, and he took the studio’s money and ran with it. He directed and starred in Under the Cherry Moon, and it can’t possibly be what the fine folks at Warner Bros. were expecting. To start with, it’s not really a musical. Prince’s awesome original score bubbles along under (and over) the action, but there’s only one scene in which Prince actually sings. Even then, he belts out “Girls & Boys” to the accompaniment of a boom box, not a live band.
Instead of a lively funk musical, Prince created a melodramatic interracial romance/buddy comedy, shot in France in black and white. The acting’s still not going to win any Oscars, but it’s miles ahead of Purple Rain. Prince comes across as something of a charming, lovable goofball instead of the odd, aloof genius of his first film. For the most part, the film stars actual actors playing roles, not musicians playing silly versions of themselves.
The black and white cinematography is the most obvious way that Under the Cherry Moon surpasses Purple Rain. Prince was a first-time director and was certainly no fool, so he hired talented cinematographer Michael Ballhaus, who would go on to work with Martin Scorcese on films including Goodfellas, Last Temptation of Christ and The Departed. The result is a film that looks fantastic, whatever its other flaws. There are some truly amazing shots here, including a circular tracking shot that follows a group of conga-line dancers as they strut and chat their way through a party. Later, there’s a panoramic shot that tracks around a full 540-degree sweep, taking in the action at the club where Prince’s character plays piano. It’s one of the most amazingly staged shots I’ve seen in some time, with choreographed action going on at every layer, foreground and back.
But the black and white cinematography and sweeping, circular camera moves aren’t something that Prince and Ballhaus threw in just to look cool. Rather, they’re in service to some of the central ideas of the film. Prince shot the film in black and white because he’s keenly interested in the dualities of the world we live in. It’s not just the film that’s in black and white. Virtually every character in the film wears variations of black or white clothing, while the sets are composed of similarly monochromatic shades. This serves to create a world of stark contrasts in just about every shot. Meanwhile, images are constantly mirrored, whether through actual reflections or balanced compositions.

Prince wants to explore the notion that there are two sides to every person, every story and every idea—and that “real” life takes place in the spaces between good and bad, love and lust, rich and poor. It’s a notion he explored constantly in his music:

Am I black or white/Am I straight or gay?
(“Controversy”)
I’m not a woman, I’m not a man/
I am something you could never understand
(“I Would Die 4 U”)

Throughout the film, he throws in shots and dialogue that don’t really move the story forward, but serve only to underline this philosophy. A great example occurs during the society birthday party near the beginning of the film. We see an elderly white couple seated at a table. The wife is pining for youth, but her husband scoffs, “Who needs youth when you have money?” Later, we see a young black pair, and the hat-wearing hipster says, “Who needs money when you have youth?” Who’s right? Both of them? Neither of them?
Another scene that illustrates Prince’s ideas on duality is the aforementioned 540-degree pan through the club where his character plays piano. The shot begins with a couple who are in the midst of an argument, then surveys the action around the room. As it travels, it passes by a happy couple cooing over one another across a table. When the camera comes back around and finds these couples again, their attitudes have turned around completely. Now, the happy couple can be seen bickering, while the previously-angry pair have reconciled into a passionate embrace. What goes around comes around, and Prince graphically illustrates this time and again through his use of camera movements, dialogue and imaginative staging.
The story itself concerns Prince’s Christopher Tracy and his (friend? brother? something else?) Tricky, played in sassy, over-the-top style by Jerome Benton. They’re a pair of gigolos in the south of France, romancing older women to pay the rent. They end up setting their sights on uber-wealthy young society gal Mary Sharon (Kristin Scott-Thomas, in her debut). Of course, they both end up falling for her, or something, and there’s some drama involving her father’s disapproval of the whole set-up.
To be honest, a lot of the plot and characterization don’t make much sense. Why is Mary Sharon portrayed as a “free spirit” at the party, then shown as a sheltered daddy’s girl for the rest of the film? What time period does this all take place? What shop in Nice is making custom lace pants and bare-midriff tops for Christopher Tracy? What exactly is the relationship between Tracy and Tricky? I mean, at one point it’s alluded to that they’re brothers, but when’s the last time your brother sat by your tub and tossed in rose petals while you bathed?
The film ambles along at a leisurely, episodic pace, until it suddenly careens off the rails in a seemingly senseless burst of violence that closes the action. The movie’s been out for thirty years, so I don’t feel bad about “spoiling” the fact that Prince’s character is gunned down by a French security guard. Much could be made about the prescience of Prince ending a 1986 film with an unarmed black man shot to death by a white authority figure, but that’s not what I find the most interesting about the scene.
At first, the ending seems supremely unsatisfying. Christopher Tracy is shot in the back for no good reason. He’s just trying to run and meet Mary Sharon in their secret sex grotto, but her father has his security goon shoot him. Tracy dies, everyone cries, then the movie quickly wraps things up. My first reaction was disappointment. What a stupid way for the lead character to die! You would think that a tragic romance should end with the character sacrificing himself to save his lover, like throwing himself in the way of a bullet meant for her. Something to give his death meaning, not just some pointless dockside shooting.
On reflection, though, I think that the pointless, random nature of Tracy’s death is actually a very purposeful statement of one of the main themes of Prince’s music. Namely, that we’re all headed for some kind of random death, and that the best thing we can do in the meantime is have a good time. In fact, Prince would argue that “having fun” is actually the purpose of our Earthly life, and that God placed us here to enjoy our physical nature while we can. This is the idea at the heart of the seemingly bizarre unity between religion and sex that is central to his music. There are countless Prince songs that reflect this philosophy, including a few of his biggest hits.

. . . Maybe it’s ’cause we’re all gonna die/
When we do, what’s it all for?/
You better live now, before the Grim Reaper comes knockin’ on your door
(“Let’s Go Crazy”)
2000, zero, zero, party’s over, oops, out of time/
So tonight I’m gonna party like it’s 1999
. . . So if I gotta die/
I’m gonna listen to my body tonight
(“1999”)

Throughout Under the Cherry Moon, Christopher Tracy says that his reason for doing things is “fun.” Why did he crash the birthday party? He thought it would be fun. What does he want for Mary Sharon? For her to experience “real fun.” (This leads to one of the best lines in the movie, when Jerome quips, “Give me a dark room and a Sam Cooke album and I’ll show her the real fun.”) Christopher Tracy’s lascivious, fun-filled life is being posited as a model to live by. His random, pointless death is actually a pointed symbol for what awaits every single one of us—and a warning that we should all be living it up until that time comes. Whether you buy into this philosophy is another thing, but Prince was quite serious about it.
Don’t get me wrong. Under the Cherry Moon is not some lost classic that should be taught in every film school. All I’m saying is that it’s the best Prince movie, in that it embodies so much of what made him great. It’s contradictory, funky, romantic, corny, confusing, silly, deadly serious, overreaching, sexy and ultimately entertaining. It wants to say something about humanity, life and love, and even if it doesn’t always succeed, it does look fantastic. You might not think it’s the greatest flick, but you’ll probably enjoy yourself while you’re watching it. I can tell you that the packed house at the Nuart sure did.
And what a house! I can safely say it was the most diverse film crowd I’ve ever been a part of. Straight and gay couples of every race and age, middle-aged Asian men, transgendered teens in print dresses, Latina housewives, black girls in Misfits shirts, hippies, Hollywood hipsters in fur coats. . .all drawn together by Prince’s unique allure.
As I sat there surrounded by humanity in all its glorious aspects, I was struck by how happy Prince probably would have been to see us all there. From the very start, he called for liberation from society’s racial, gender and class roles. “White, black, Puerto Rican, everybody just a-freakin’,” he sang way back in 1980’s “Uptown.” The fact that the multi-cultural, gender-bending community of Prince’s dreams had indeed come together for a few hours to enjoy the stylish antics of Under the Cherry Moon seemed so right somehow. Somewhere, I thought, Prince must be smiling. Or at least smirking.