She's gotta have it

"Nola Darling (Johns), a modern black woman living in Brooklyn, is sexually involved with three different men -- old fashioned and protective Jamie, vain and arrogant model Greer, and silly and juvenile Mars -- and she likes that just fine. Nobody owns her. They're not happy with this arrangement, however, and pressure Nola to make a choice, which she does, but it's not what she really wants. Writer and director Spike Lee made this early, 1986 black-and-white feature with his NYU film school classmates as actors, on a tiny budget, with no retakes. It's a fine, sensual study of so-called "promiscuity" from a liberated and reasonably feminist perspective, as well as a look at artistic, educated, middle-class African Americans instead of boyz 'n' da hood. Lee himself appeared here for the first time as Mars Blackmon, the geeky guy who would turn up later in many Nike commercials with black sports stars."