Black Women Gave The Best Movie Performances Of 2023

The romantic comedy is back, baby! That’s what I said out loud to myself while I was watching Rye Lane, one of my favorite movies of the year. Rom-coms usually get overlooked when it comes to year-end roundups and during awards season. Not this year, not on my watch! Director Raine Allen-Miller just won The Toronto Film Critics Association’s award for Best First Feature (as she should!) for her warm, exhilarating rom-com about two strangers in South London who fall in love in a day. One half of that coupling is Yas, played by Vivian Oparah, who is a hysterically irreverent revelation. She and Dom (David Jonsson) are both reeling after bad breakups and set out on a day of adventure, messiness, and mayhem. They’ve both got chemistry and charm bursting through the screen, but it’s Oparah’s unfiltered Yas that makes Rye Lane a modern rom-com that holds up against the classics. She’s effortless and enigmatic like Sandra Bullock, confident like Queen Latifah, as sexy and independent as Sanaa Lathan, and as adorable and delightful as Meg Ryan. She’s the Gen Z/ millennial rom-com leading lady we’ve been waiting for.