Sylvie’s Love

Hol­ly­wood romances of the 1950s and ​’60s have a cer­ti­fied for­mu­la for swoon­ing suc­cess. Beguil­ing beau­ty plus hand­some hero equals an epic love sto­ry played out against the back­drop of the Hol­ly­wood hills and star­ry moun­tain tops. An ode to this era, Sylvie’s Love puts Black char­ac­ters cen­tre stage and takes clas­sic cin­e­ma from Hol­ly­wood to Harlem.

We meet Sylvie (Tes­sa Thomp­son) in the sum­mer of 1957, man­ning the desk of her father’s record store and spend­ing her days dream­ing of a career in tele­vi­sion. She meets sax­o­phon­ist Robert (Nnam­di Aso­mugha) in stan­dard roman­tic fan­ta­sy fash­ion; album rec­om­men­da­tions reveal­ing a spark between the pair. Robert lands a job at the store and the two become friends, chem­istry ever-present. Sum­mer ends and, despite their feel­ings, the pair go their sep­a­rate ways, with Sylvie’s TV aspi­ra­tions start­ing to take flight just as her fiancé returns from war and Robert’s jazz quar­tet get­ting their big break in Paris.

Thomp­son and Asomugha’s effort­less con­nec­tion makes you yearn for fate to bring their char­ac­ters back togeth­er. While Robert stops just short of being a three-dimen­sion­al char­ac­ter, his soft-spo­ken earnest­ness masks a lack of depth with the sto­icism of a man from the Silent Gen­er­a­tion. Sylvie, on the oth­er hand, has more to her than the film decides to ful­ly explore; her career and trou­bled mar­riage take a back­seat even though at times they are more com­pelling than the cen­tral love story.

Thompson’s career has gone from strength to strength in recent years, with stand­out per­for­mances in the Creed films, West­world, Sor­ry to Both­er You, Thor: Rag­narok and Avengers: Endgame bol­ster­ing her rep­u­ta­tion as one of the most excit­ing and ver­sa­tile actors work­ing today. The role of Sylvie may seem small by com­par­i­son, yet she still gives a spir­it­ed per­for­mance that’s del­i­cate as well as determined.

Writer/​director Eugene Ashe, a for­mer record­ing artist, crafts a styl­ish fea­ture that’s ele­vat­ed by a lilt­ing jazz sound­track and daz­zling cin­e­matog­ra­phy. The shots of New York City and Harlem’s inti­mate jazz clubs are engross­ing from start to fin­ish. Sub­tle (and not so sub­tle) nods to his­toric events are weaved through­out the film, plac­ing Sylvie and Rob’s sto­ry on the time­line of a tumul­tuous era.

Sylvie’s Love is a sweet and sin­cere por­tray­al of Black love, a film where race per­me­ates the lives of our pro­tag­o­nists with­out detract­ing from the fan­ta­sy of their romance. Films such as these are just as essen­tial to Black rep­re­sen­ta­tion in Hol­ly­wood, and Ashe suc­ceeds with a sweep­ing sto­ry that brings togeth­er chang­ing times, a chang­ing cul­ture, and the true price of love.

Sylvie’s Love is avail­able on Ama­zon Prime from 23 December.