"Dear White People" gets incredible mileage out of Thompson's personaility (along with her dizzying beauty) and that of her co-star, Tyler James Williams ("Everybody Hates Chris"). Williams isn't the leading man, but he quietly leads the film. As oddly Afroed, gay Lionel, he plays a character we never see in movies, a shy, offbeat young Negro whose awkward social navigation invites as much sympathy and identification as laughs. Such a watchful, introspective character, when Caucasian, naturally assumes the role of Unlikely Hero. When Negro, he is either a non-entity or a joke. In "Dear White People," he simply stands for any Negro kid who finds himself adrift in a sea of cliques and types that reserve one predetermined slot for his kind. In a sweet little reverie, he imagines himself fitting in smoothly with the Caucasian kids and then with the Afrocentric crowd, his hairstyle and clothing changing to suit each reality. Yet neither are his reality.

There are no easy heroes or foils in this briskly cross-cutting ensemble piece, only blossoming adults and beleagured elders (including Dennis Haysbert, cast to type as a no-nonsense Dean of Students) responding to a unversity economic crisis by standing their ground and sharpening their knives. Austerity breeds contempt. Two big events bookend the power plays and betrayals in between: A student government election complicated by House Negro/Field Negro politics of a distant era; and a racist theme party hosted by the movie's fictional equivalent of the Harvard Lampoon. Along the margins, a reality TV producer pulls some marionette strings. This is Obama era satire, but, in his visual storytelling, Simien is not joking. He's not content to work from the stale but persistent improv-mockumentary template that's been the state of the art for a decade--where the handheld camera flops around with a lack of conviction and worldview to match a gang of (often Ivy educated) comedy writers just bobbing for laughs.

In contrast, Simien treats his own screenplay as if it were a slow-boiling neo-noir thriller, or, in its dapper sensuality, "8 1/2." You could make a (film geek) party game out of guessing his influences. There's the erudite-vernacular screwball dialogue of Wilder, Schulberg, Chayevsky and their funkiest disciple, Spike Lee (circa "He Got Game"-to-present). Certain Wellesian low angle shots of strident characters arrayed like superheroes of intolerance suggest "The Boondocks." There's also the brashness of very early Spike, particularly the campus cattiness of "School Daze" and the exuberant sexuality of "She's Gotta Have It"-through-"Jungle Fever." Lionel mentions his own love of Robert Altman films--perhaps shared by the director, though his canvas, full as it is, rarely gets Altman-messy. The dialogue is dense but rolls out as neatly as a "Dragnet" interrogation.

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