Curtainup Founder & Editor Elyse Sommer's Epilogue -- I've passed the torch for reviewing and editing new theater productions on and off-Broadway and elsewhere. However, I'll continue to sound off here with my take on Live and Onscreen Entertainment. As for Curtainup's extensive content since 1996-- it's all sill available at www.curtainup.com

Thursday, August 11, 2022

Sylvie's Love-- A Slice of Hollywood's Old Fashioned Romances With a New-Fangled Twist


By Elyse Sommer

Since I saw and reviewed Tessa Thompson in Rebecca Wilson's terrific film adaptation of Nella Larson's 1939 novel Passing (http://www.curtainup.com/passingmovie.html), any film she's in moves straight to the top of my must-see list. For some, her starring role in the multi-season Westworld series might be a draw.

Thompson's now starring in a romance with a strong whiff of the golden era of happy-ever-after Hollywood movies, which was more of a drawback than a draw for contemporary film producers. As they saw Eugene Ashe's love story, its focus on the personal made it seem irrelevant, especially since the romance's time frame paralleled the late '50s and early '60s when the civil rights movement reached its peak -- a peak that has been given new urgency by the current civil rights protests triggered by the George Floyd and Breonna Taylor killings.

Yet, important as it is to right unresolved racist attitudes and actions, pandemic-wary-and-weary theater and movie goers are hungry for an occasional escape from more gritty, painfully true staged or screened narratives.

Fortunately, Sylvie's Love (available for streaming on Amazon Prime) has blossomed into life despite all those producers' turn-downs. Unlike so many plays and movies nowadays, it provides audiences with a beautifully acted, smartly crafted, enjoyable diversion. It's easy to fall in love with Sylvie and Robert, and root for their often star-crossed love to end happily ever after.

Unlike Tessa Thompson, her co-star Nnamdi Asomugha came to acting more recently. As Eugene Ashe was a musician before, so Asomugha was previously an athlete. Ashe's musicianship has greatly enriched the film and imbues it with a picture of the period's change in music as well as society generally. It also inspired Asomugha to learn how to play the saxophone to actually deliver the jazzy musical numbers.

Per the title, this is essentially Sylvie's story and Thompson does full justice to it. But thanks to her co-star, the superb ensemble cast and the savvy production team, Sylvie's Love is truly a triumph of collaborative excellence.

Best of all, Mr. Ashe clearly wants you to enjoy the visual glitz of the movies made during the Hollywood studios' glory days. But his creation of that world, with its beautiful clothes, elegant sets and happy-ending romance, is more than a lightweight entertainment. Those producers who thought it was incumbent on Black filmmakers to only tell more political stories got it all wrong.

Sylvie's Love does have a story that should apply a corrective brush to the fault line tarnishing those movies. While families like his own were prospering and living the American dream like the actors in those movies, the culture of the time did not cast Black people. And so, Ashe filled in the blank in that part of the Golden Era romantic canvas with Sylvie and Robert, who at the time of that Hollywood studio culture would have  been strictly on the outside looking in -- or perhaps offered roles as servants.

Now we get a chance to see them experiencing the same emotions, dreaming the same dreams and being too influenced by the cultural mores of the times to always make the right moves towards that happy ending. Thus Sylvie, raised in an upwardly mobile social environment with its own debutante balls for meeting prosperous husbands, makes the safe choice. The male attitude about supporting a wife almost sabotages that ultimate happy ending. Seeing only people who don't look like you admitted into a world you yearn to be part of may not be as horrid an example of racism as the deadly actions against Black people, but it is an injustice that needs to be corrected. Eugene Ashe's  correction. manages to be at once joyful and tearful.

Bravo!

If you missed Tessa Thompson in the darker and more race-conscious Passing, it's still available on Netflix. I re-watched it after seeing her as the luminous Sylvie and I was bowled all over again.