The title card that opens the book by screenwriter and director Eugene Ashe Sylvie’s love (now streaming on Amazon) informs us that we are in New York City in 1962. This announcement quickly becomes superfluous, however – as soon as you hear Nancy Wilson’s version of “The Nearness of You” about the old yellow taxis passing by old people – school cafeterias, cigar shops and the Canadian Club sign in Times Square, along with the sight of Tessa Thompson looking positively radiant in a radioactive blue evening dress, you know exactly wherever and whenever you are. If nothing else, Ashe’s meticulous setback recreates a lost time and place with attention to the details of a magnificent obsessive; the opening sequences are simply a precursor to past fashion shows and Gotham Deco’s glorious and lost gluttony to come. As for Thompson, she is Sylvie, waiting patiently outside City Hall, looking for her date as an elegant crowd enters the venue. (Wilson is, in fact, on the bill tonight; Cannonball Adderly and “Moms” Mabley will be playing there in a few days. 1962!) Welcome to the exuberant life.
Suddenly, she spots a young man walking near the front – the same gentleman we just saw in a recording session, working a tenor saxophone with a jazz quartet and dripping with the cool Blue Note. “Robert Holloway!” she says, slightly surprised. These two know each other. Five years ago, Robert (Nnamdi Asomugha) entered a Harlem record store in search of Thelonious Monk’s recently released “Brilliant Colors”. Sylvie is behind the counter, watching “I Love Lucy”; her father, Mr. Jay (Lance Reddick), owns the place. Robert leaves with the record and a part-time job at the store. Although she is more fanatic about rock & roll, the two are united by music. (If your pillow talk idea is someone explaining why someone would love Sonny Rollins’ “Way Out West”, my God, this is the movie for you.)
The friendship slowly begins to blossom into something more passionate, although the relationship between the two is immediately surrounded by obstacles. Sylvie is informed by her affected and suitable mother (Erica Gimpel) that he is below his stature. Robert is informed by his band leader (Tone Bell) that, thanks to the sponsorship of a rich white jazzbo who goes by the nickname “The Countess” (Jemima Kirke, generating some serious energy from Big Dorothy Malone), the quartet guaranteed a long residency in Paris. They reluctantly say goodbye. When she sees Robert again, outside the city hall doors, Sylvie is married, has a mother and lives in the suburbs. She simply came to town to find her undisciplined cousin (Aja Naomi King) for the show. He’s only briefly in town to record. Still, some embers never stop burning.
There’s more – much more – to come, including adultery, intolerance, revealed secrets, a cooking show on TV, the appearance of MC Lyte, Eva Longoria doing a great job on Celia Cruz’s “Quizás, Quizás, Quizás”, triumph, tragedy and several plot twists that are better discovered than described here. Miles Davis and Motown are checked; so does CORE and the 63 march in Washington. Incidents accumulate because Sylvie’s love it is, first of all, a flashback to the torrid Hollywood melodramas of the past, and this is what you get when you pay for your ticket. If this had been done at some point in the 1940s, Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck would be playing these roles. In the 1950s, you would probably have Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman, or if the producers wanted to demote the younger ones, Troy Donahue and Sandra Dee.
The fact that you are watching this film with Asomugha and Thompson in the protagonists, however – something that you almost certainly would not have seen when these types of films were in fashion at that time – is part of the point of Sylvie’s love, and it cannot be underestimated. Or, by the way, underestimated: This is, in many ways, an attempt to claim a territory that African American actors and audiences were denied in the mid-20th century, so Ashe is belatedly rectifying the situation in the 21st century. he is clearly indulgent in some excessive TCM activity as research, as is filmmaker Declan Quinn, costume designer Phoenix Mellow and production designer Mayne Berke – the way these three managed to channel the era and pay homage to operatic luxury. most of the films of the time will make you pass out as much as the central novel. What Asomugha, a former NFL cornerback who became an actor, and Thompson sometimes lack in chemistry, is offset by what appears to be a commitment to the acting style of the film’s ancestors. The affects of your emotions and line readings make perfect sense if you spent some time warming up in Douglas Sirk’s catalog, or even if you simply remember the pulp Fiction quote about the director (“burned to a crisp or bloody like hell”). This lovingly recreated Sirkus Maximus doesn’t work without them.
That is, when Sylvie’s love it works like a melodrama in itself. There are scenes where Ashe, the cast and crew make you feel like you’ve stepped into a time machine. And then there are several moments when you feel a certain disconnect, as if you are watching modern actors and craftsmen down the line indulging in a ’62 spirit fantasy party. You still applaud the tribute, and any movie that lets Thompson touch the emotional scales should be praised. But when the spell is broken, temporarily or not, it is easy to be mastered by art and take care of this affectionate complaint and still feel that all the fainting that the sky allows is almost, but not enough.