Beauty Grace Malice is the eight feature film by director Terry Spears.
It tells the story of single mother Grace (Taja Brittaney) who is framed for a robbery she didn't commit by her deadbeat boyfriend Jeremiah and friend Tishara.
Facing mounting legal bills and losing custody of her son Grace is thwarted at every turn to legally clear her name and keep her head above water.
Out of options she finds herself drawn into the cities criminal underbelly doing sex work to get by and its in this setting she finds an ally in private detective Ellijah (Marlon Ladd who also helped write the script) who guides Grace in getting even.
The sun drenched streets of California are a stark contrast to the cities criminal underbelly Grace is forced to navigate.
Director Terry Spears avoids the visual cliches of the crime genre- no rain soaked streets dark alleys or a villain standing alone in a skyscraper looking down at the chaos below.
The film wisely never treats Grace like a helpless victim nor as a hardened criminal instead portraying her as a resilient person trying to scrape by in a morally compromised world.
Theres also a lot of sharp commentary and satire about race relations in the United States showing realistically what people are forced to resort to when they live in a place without a social safety net when things inevitably go bad.
