How Two of This Oscars Season’s Buzziest Films Failed Their Black Heroines

The last time we see DeAndre in One Battle After Another, tears are streaming down her face as an ICE agent questions her about the whereabouts of her comrade Bob. “I don’t know,” she says repeatedly through sobs — and she doesn’t. This does not satisfy the agent, who continues to grill her. Scene ends. It’s never clear what happens to her after that; the film finishes about forty-five minutes later without any of the characters even questioning her absence. 

So little cinematic real estate is given to DeAndre in Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film. The story is primarily fascinated with Bob, a white former member of the left-leaning, anti-government group called the French 75. Bob has been living in semi exile for nearly two decades with his sixteen year old daughter, Willa, after he was forced to flee with her when she was just an infant, after his lover and Willa’s mother, Perfidia Beverly Hills, was captured by the state. Following Perfidia’s arrest and coerced confession, several members of the French 75 were assassinated. Along with Bob and Willa, the only other members who were able to make a run for it were DeAndre and a character named Sommerville. 

It’s never mentioned where DeAndre ends up going. After Bob and Willa’s dramatic exit, we simply see her walk away into the night. It makes it all the more stunning when sixteen years after those events, she appears, like a radical fairy godmother, in Willa’s high school bathroom to rescue the teen after a distress signal had been put out following Sommerville’s arrest. “I know you have a lot of questions, and I’ll answer them later, but right now we have to roll,” DeAndre says to Willa.