Lifetime
Lifetime dips back into the ‘Ripped from the Headlines’ genre its made a cottage industry from, tackling a compelling and harrowing true-life story that is still, unfortunately for the subject of the story, incomplete.
Not My Family: The Monique Smith Story tells the story of a woman known as Symbolie Monique Smith, known by her family as Bolie, but preferring to go by her middle name outside of that group. The movie starts with a grown Smith (Yaya DaCosta) handing out fliers searching for a missing child … which happens to be her. Flashing back to the 1970s, a young Bolie has a truly terrible childhood. Her mother is abusive for no reason, and her uncles are sexually abusing her. The only real love she feels is from her grandmother. But as Bolie turns 18 and wants to enlist in the military to pay for her college education, her mother Elizabeth (Tiffany Black) tells her she was rejected — until Bolie finds the torn up acceptance letter in the trash — and refuses to give her a birth certificate or Social Security card. She begins to suspect that she perhaps is not really a part of this family, and leaves her grandmother a goodbye note, takes an envelope full of cash under her mother’s mattress, and sets out to find herself. While sleeping on the bus, another passenger steals the envelope, and when she arrives in St. Augustine, Florida, she has no money and nowhere to stay. An apparently kind stranger offers her a room at her place, but Bolie — now Monique — soon learns this isn’t just some kind stranger’s home. It’s a business and Monique is quickly entrapped in a world of prostitution.
But she meets a man who promises to care for her and they marry, she gives birth to a daughter, but that life goes sour quickly and he becomes just as abusive as her mother. She gets a job, befriends co-worker Rubye (Courtney Grace). But she is still nagged by the notion that she isn’t who she believes she is, and is unable to find any record of her birth in Baltimore, where she grew up. Her grandmother suggests that Monique’s mother went to New York and just showed up one day with the child, but no one ever asked how Elizabeth came about having possession of the girl. With the help of a detective and DNA testing, it becomes clear Monique is not Elizabeth’s biological daughter, and confronting the woman Monique still gets no concrete answers, only told that her real mother was a drug addict. Elizabeth never reveals if she was given the girl to take care of or if she abducted the child. Monique meets another man named Jonathan, and they actually build a strong relationship. Monique gives birth to a son, but still feels her life is incomplete, and that feeling is only exacerbated by her son’s Family Tree project for school. Monique sets out on a quest to find out whose blood runs through her veins, and she finally gets some answers but her movie journey ends with many questions still unanswered. In real life Monique is known as ‘The Oldest Living Jane Doe’, and she is still trying to complete her story.
Not My Family: The Monique Smith Story is a truly engrossing story, at times hard to watch as young Monique is physically and mentally abused by Elizabeth, while being sexually abused behind closed doors by her ‘uncles’ (she says at one point that one of them said to her that she wasn’t really his niece … so that made it okay in his eyes). Solace Kimbro Jones does a fantastic job as the young Bolie, bringing a true child’s innocence to the role, make the viewers feel real empathy and sympathy for her (and some anger at her grandmother for not stopping any of the abuse). At the age of 18, DaCosta takes over the role (and at 43, you have to suspend some disbelief to accept DaCosta as 18), totally engaging us as she matures (and becomes more believable as Monique ages), getting us invested in her quest, following her through all the ups and downs of Monique’s life, and giving us a truly tear-jerking moment when everything she’s worked for pays off. The raw emotion DaCosta displays in those final scenes is palpable (and if you’ve ever watched an episode of Relative Race you know how authentic DaCosta’s performance is). And a final shot with the real Monique only makes things even more emotional for the viewer. Keep those Kleenex handy!
Lifetime
Also giving an outstanding performance is Tiffany Black, in what had to be an emotionally draining role as Elizabeth, her constant rage and disdain always on display. She does have a moment when teen Bolie tells Elizabeth that she looks pretty with her purple eye shadow that allows Black to soften a bit and actually appreciate the kind words, but she snaps in an instant when Bolie asks for her birth certificate again. It’s quite terrifying. Later in the movie when Liz tries to play grandmother to Monique’s children, trying to paint Monique as a bad mother for leaving her kids with ‘a stranger’ (actually her friend Rubye) to go digging around about her identity, you can see the fury simmering in Black’s eyes. She truly is the villain of the story and her performance is electrifying.
Of the main supporting cast, Robert Hamilton offers some real stability in Monique’s life and he shows her kindness, love and support. It almost comes as a shock when he says he’s not the marrying type when the subject comes up but they still build a solid life together (even if he does become frustrated with her constantly running off to track down another lead to her identity). Courtney Grace’s Rubye is almost a bit too over-the-top when she first meets Monique but she becomes a true friend and always shows her support for Monique’s quest. Grace brings a lot of compassion to Rubye.
The screenplay by Sylvia Jones seems to capture Monique’s story authentically (although there is a long disclaimer that many aspects of the story have been fictionalized for dramatic purposes), and director Tailiah Breon does a great job evoking the feel of the various decades through the look of the film, using desaturated color for the past, more vibrant colors for the scenes set in the present (or near present). Some may be confused by the sudden change in aspect ratio for the last 20 minutes of the movie, which suddenly goes into a widescreen mode for no real reason (had the aspect ratios changed between the various decades, it would have made more sense). The costume and hair and makeup departments did their due diligence to make everything look as authentic as possible, probably helping the actors fully live in their performances. A very top notch production all around with some truly great performances.
The real Monique Smith may never know what actually happened with her biological mother and how she ended up with Elizabeth, but her story is one of diligence, never giving up hope that a lost child could eventually be found.
Not My Family: The Monique Smith Story has a run time of 1 hour 27 minutes, and is rated TV-14.
Official Trailer | Not My Family: The Monique Smith Story
Lifetime