Cord Jefferson's first feature film earned five Oscars nominations including Best Picture, but was discreetly released on Prime Video on February 27. Despite this low-key launch, the Amazon subsidiary has every reason to promote that it is streaming American Fiction, an acerbic and disturbing comedy that also detours into familiar forms of family drama. Especially considering that it was produced by MGM, the studio Jeff Bezos' multinational corporation acquired in 2022.

The important thing is that the film is within reach of the remote control, which means that we can immediately venture into the existential labyrinth in which Thelonious "Monk" Ellison (Jeffrey Wright) has lost his way. A writer and academic from Boston's African-American upper class, Monk departs from the repertoire of jobs that American cinema usually assigns to Black people. It was around this singularity that Jefferson, until now a screenwriter for TV series, and not just any series (Watchmen, The Good Place), built his screenplay, adapted from the novel Erasure by Percival Everett (2001).

A published but little-read novelist who often draws his inspiration from Greco-Roman literature and professor of literature at a West Coast university, Monk comes up against students who are fussy about terminology and trigger warnings. When their teacher writes the title of the Flannery O'Connor short story "The Artificial N****" on the blackboard, the university administration advises Monk to take advantage of a literary conference in Boston to pay a long visit to his family, whom he claims to hate.

The opening scenes, characterized by their satirical tone, skillfully crafted by Wright, who is adept at subtle humor, fully capitalize on the comedic potential of the protagonist's various misfortunes, setting the stage for the protagonist's social and intellectual milieu. In perpetual revolt against the expectations imposed on him by institutions and businesses, Monk takes a stand by removing his own books from the "African-American studies" section of a bookshop. Despite this, Monk remains incapable of charting a course for himself, preferring to wander down intellectual and professional dead-ends.

When he reconnects with his family, the film shifts gears. Now it's the script's turn to go against stereotypes. The Ellison family, a medical dynasty (Monk's brother and sister are doctors), lives in a large villa under the care of a kind-hearted maid. They also live with the memory of their father's suicide and fears about the future, as his widow is showing the first symptoms of age-related dementia.

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