NR | 1h 39m | Drama | 2024
In the early 1990s, Mississippi was one of many states that forced aspiring hair-braiders to acquire unrelated cosmetology licenses. This was after completing the expensive mandatory coursework. That was a lucrative deal for both the state licensing authorities and the cosmetology schools.
The real-life Institute of Justice (IJ) has repeatedly challenged such financial barriers to small business creation across the country. Melony Armstrong (Simona Brown) was the perfect plaintiff to challenge Mississippi’s arbitrary licensing regulations. All she wanted to do was build her business and empower her employees.
Despite multiple attempts to shut her down, the small-business owner never gives up in screenwriter-director Dianne Houston’s “Freedom Hair,” produced by the freedom-promoting Moving Picture Institute (MPI).
It takes time for Armstrong to figure out her dream role in life. However, her husband Kevin (Jeremie Harris) always knew he would eventually answer the pastor’s calling, but that will come sometime in the future. In the meantime, they return to his hometown in Mississippi. There, his stern grandmother, known as G’Mom (Donna Biscoe), frostily welcomes his new wife. While her husband takes construction jobs, Armstrong finds employment in her sister-in-law Dee’s (Erica Tazel) after-hours salon on G’Mom’s property, until the older woman spitefully cuts off their waterline.
State Regulators
Government licensing bureaucrats first insist she needs a cosmetology license, but when Armstrong challenges their logic, they change course. Instead, they claim she needs a wigology (wig grooming) license, knowing the outdated discipline had not been taught for at least 15 years. However, the test still exists, and Armstrong passes it. Yet state inspectors continue to harass her business.
That’s when Armstrong contacts Dana Berliner (Sophia Bush), a litigator at the Institute of Justice. Bush also served as an executive producer on “Freedom Hair,” and appears as an extra in the IJ office scene.
Hair-braiding as practiced by Armstrong is largely a black fashion phenomenon. However, for Berliner and IJ, that made their hair-braiding cases perfect examples of how economic regulations often hurt the lower economic classes that politicians and regulators self-righteously claim to protect.
Houston takes awhile to reach the big legal and political battle that is the whole point of “Freedom Hair.” However, it’s important to understand how the Armstrongs’ Christian faith and immediate family help sustain them during times of trial.
Brown’s forceful, charismatic performance as Armstrong goes a long way towards maintaining audience investment during the long biographical build-up. She convincingly portrays the hair-braider’s strength and vulnerability in equal measure. Harris doesn’t have nearly the same impact playing her loyal husband Kevin, but he still delivers some stirring moments discussing the power of his faith and his desire to serve. While Bush portrays Berliner with crisp professionalism and often depicts her as a sympathetic advocate, it seems like there was a conscious decision that she wouldn’t overshadow Armstrong in any way.
Although Houston and her cast present hair-braiding as a source of black pride, the overall tone of “Freedom Hair” isn’t divisive. The authority figures and state regulators who sneer at Armstrong and her fellow braiders are more than counterbalanced by the cosmetology teacher and IJ staffers who help her wage her fight.
“Freedom Hair” compares, both thematically and stylistically, to R.J. Daniel Hanna’s “Miss Virginia,” which told the true story of single-mother Virginia Walden Ford. Ford overcame powerful special interests to pass a school choice voucher program for students in the nation’s capital. Hanna’s film was also an MPI-supported production.
It takes guts to challenge government regulators and the symbiotic institutions whose interests they protect. Yet, Armstrong proved it can be done.
Recommended as a scrappy underdog success story and for Simona Brown’s winning screen presence.
