Pariah

LITTLE ROCK — Early on in Dee Rees’ refreshingly modest and honest coming-of-age film Pariah, we watch as a black Brooklyn teenager transforms herself from an edgy, androgynous and possibly dangerous street character to an unthreatening teenager (“Daddy’s little girl”) in a pink T-shirt and hair bow with dangling earrings while on a bus ride home.

It’s a scene that many suburban-raised kids of disparate generations might relate to -adolescents have probably always offered different personas to different constituencies. Who among us hasn’t shucked off a Grandma-gifted cardigan and slipped on a beat-up leather jacket as soon as we were out of sight of the house?

But Alike (pronounced Ah-LEE-kay) Freeman (Adepero Oduye) is shedding more than outre fashion; she’s packing away her budding sexual identity.