Mark Reviews Movies: SYLVIE'S LOVE

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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 22, 2020

With Sylvie's Love, writer/director Eugene Ashe has set out to make an old-fashioned romance, and we're not just talking about the fact that the movie is set in the late 1950s and early '60s. It's also a matter of the story's priorities, as it holds melodrama above any real sense of these characters or what makes the central relationship special—besides a lot of obstacles and complications getting in the way of their happiness.

The movie certainly has its charms. Ashe re-creates the period with dreamy affection, by way of stylish costumes, lush lighting, accurate production design, and even archival footage from the era for establishing shots and transitional sequences. It features a pair of fine, charismatic performances from actors who know exactly what this material is and that it needs to be played in a lower key than the plot. It looks and feels right, but the story's focus on how many ways this relationship can falter and fall apart, before fortune gives the couple shot after shot to figure out things, ultimately leaves us feeling empty.

Ashe's screenplay begins in 1962, as Sylvie (Tessa Thompson) and Robert (Nnamdi Asomugha) meet by chance outside a New York City theater. They know each other and clearly have a past, so the movie flashes back five years to the time when they first meet and eventually have their lives changed forever for the connection.

Back in 1957 Harlem, Robert is a talented saxophone player in a jazz quartet, and Sylvie works at a record and electronic-repair shop owned by her father (played by Lance Reddick). After a rehearsal, Robert is looking for an album and spots Sylvie, who's obsessive about television. In the process of chatting her up, Robert ends up with a job at the shop.

He'd like for something to start with Sylvie, but she's currently engaged to a man serving overseas. "I wish you'd stop talking about your engagement," Robert says at some point. "It's the least interesting thing about you."

To be fair, there isn't much that's interesting about either of these characters. They're both talented, in ways that are obvious (Robert's sax playing) or waiting to be revealed (Sylvie's knowledge of TV), and in love with each other, even though Sylvie can't make her feelings as obvious as Robert.

It's telling that Ashe presents the course of their relationship, which begins and first ends when they kiss on Sylvie's stoop after she sees one of Robert's shows, through montage. If his screenplay had any concern for these characters as people with more to them than career ambitions and star-crossed love, Ashe would show us. Instead, they talk in inside jokes ("See you later, alligator" becomes the main one, after Robert secretly sees Sylvie dancing to the song) and about how the relationship can't work and with longing stares that give away how much they want it to.

Beyond setting up the big wedge between the couple when we first meet them in 1962, not too much happens in the extended flashback. The two fall for each other, despite Sylvie's engagement and the disapproval of her mother (played by Erica Gimpel), who disappears as soon as her use as an obstacle vanishes. Robert gets an opportunity to play a steady gig in Paris, and Sylvie discovers that she's pregnant. He leaves, unaware that he'll become a father. She stays, to start the life that has been decided for her.

The rest of the story, showing what happens after that chance meeting outside the theater in '62, certainly gives us additional complications (Sylvie gets a job on the producing team of a television cooking show, and Robert is at odds with his band, being the most promising member) and obstacles (Sylvie is now a mother and married to a controlling Lacy, played by Alano Miller, and jazz is becoming old hat). Ashe, though, retains the philosophy that what happens to these characters, preventing them from finding a way to make their seemingly destined romance work, is far more important than who these people actually are, outside of all the problems and barriers. It definitely bypasses every tough question about this situation (Sylvie's daughter exists in the background, because she's just plot device) and period of time (Racism is briefly raised, although it is admirable that Ashe doesn't want it to become a key element of this particular story, which is generally about people finding their own way on their own terms).

What happens? A lot does in terms of plotting (There are multiple misunderstandings that a simple, honest conversation would solve). Not much does, though, in terms of seeing these characters as more than pawns in a melodrama that wants to bitterly keep them apart, so that it's so much sweeter when they end up together—as briefly as that may be (A pair of montages show us the highlights of the relationship, but they only remind us how shallow it is). Sylvie's Love does a lot of work to establish the look and mood of this story, and if Ashe had done even half of that for the characters, the movie might have had something.

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