Suicide Kale tells the story of new couple Jasmine (Brittani Nichols) and Penn (Lindsay Hicks) as they head to lunch at their married friends Jordan (Brianna Baker) and Billie’s (Jasika Nicole) house. Once they arrive, Jasmine and Penn are greeted by a smiling Billie, beer in hand, who invites them inside and immediately asks them how they got together and how being a new couple feels. After Penn and Jasmine give Billie their answers, Billie walks outside to tell Jordan — who is grilling kabobs — that their guests are here.
They exchange a few terse words before Billie heads back inside. However, while they are outside, Penn and Jasmine are inside speculating that the couple is fighting. Jasmine and Penn wander around the house as their hosts talk outside and when they find themselves in the bedroom of their hosts, Penn makes a comment about how she wants to have a quickie. They rush out of the room when they hear Billie’s voice calling for them to join the other couple outside but as they’re leaving, Jasmine finds a note.
Jasmine, bothered by the contents of the note, makes an excuse about forgetting wine so that she and Penn can go to the car. While they are gone, the tables have turned and Billie and Jordan believe that they are the ones fighting and acting strangely. Jasmine tells Penn that she believes that the note in question is a suicide note and they agree to work together to figure out which of the friends wrote it. Chaos ensues and they discover that their friends aren’t the perfect couple that they thought they were.
The film, written by Nichols, was also produced with Carly Usdin. Nicole is credited as one of the Executive Producers and Hicks and Baker have additional dialog credits. For this reason, the cast was quite busy in the five days that it took to shoot the film (and on a $4,000 budget, no less).
Nichols felt that it was imperative to tell a different kind of lesbian story, one that wasn’t about coming out, sleeping with a man, or a character death at the end. The movie has an all-female cast and stars three black women in a dark comedy whose genre has made very little space for black women to star in and create movies like this. Suicide Kale has been drumming up well-deserved attention since it won an Audience Award at Outfest and played every major LGBT festival. The film is set to play in Chicago, New York, DC, and Atlanta soon and if you’re in those cities, you won’t want to miss it.
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Lunch with a side of Suicide Kale: photos courtesy of Brittani Nichols
