Yes No Maybe So: Southside With You
Monday, May 9, 2016 at 3:00PM Manuel here. Seeing as today seems to be the first day where New York City seems to have finally begun to embrace Springtime, it's no surprise I found myself lured by the warm, sunny vistas in Richard Tanne's first trailer for his Sundance flick Southside with You. The film follows the first date of an African-American couple in Chicago. Not just any couple, mind you. It's the Obamas' first date. That obviously raises the stakes though from the looks of it (and from the notices out of Sundance) the film still plays like a low-key romantic drama focused more on the couple's dynamics with a pair of eye-catching performances at its heart.
And so, let's put the trailer through our patented Yes/No/Maybe So format after the jump to see whether Tanne's film is ready for its close up.
YES
"I mean they did look good on Dumbo"
- Films about first dates and falling in love succeed on the strength of the chemistry between its leads and boy do Tika Sumpter and Parker Sawyers seem to have that in spades, from that very first banter-y interaction ("You're late!") to the flirty one we see at trailer's end.
- "From Executive Producer John Legend." Putting this in the "Yes" column because the film's trailer's music put a smile on my face. (
- Even from just the trailer I already want to see more of Sumpter and Sawyers. That "I'm an ice-cream kind of girl" has me swooning for Sumpter, while the brief glimpses we get of Sawyers in full Obama-hope-and-change mode shows great promise.
- If you're going to tackle a prominent figure, this "single day" formula is a great way of avoiding biopic clichés, so I'm already sold on that regard.
- What struck me the most about the trailer was the way it stressed the film's visuals. When you're stuck with just two characters talking for most of the film, you risk making the film look rather dull but I was taken by the way Tanne seems to have worked to avoid this (I particularly love the moments in the art gallery when Michelle is in focus, almost framed by the arches behind her while Barack is slightly out of focus, standing behind her).
NO
"Who doesn't like pie?"
- I'm so enamored with this trailer (its whiffs of Before Sunrise/Sunset boding well) that I really can't find much to object to, so perhaps we'll wonder whether first time writer/director Richard Tanne has been able to embolden the material both visually and narratively. Might this be an interesting diversion with not much else to it?
MAYBE SO
"You're through an awful lotta trouble for just another smooth-talking brother."
- Might this be a "too soon" type of film? Or more to the point, can the film overcome the feelings audiences have with the Obamas in office to paint a picture of who they were as two young people falling in love?
- I also worry we might have two Barack Obama pics so close to one another: Vikram Gandhi's Barry due by the end of the year (supposedly) is going more biopic-ey, focusing on the President's time in college in New York City, with Devon Terrell in the lead role.
Check out the full trailer below and tell us whether you'll be spending a sunny afternoon in the Southside with the Obamas this summer.
Southside with You opens on August 26, 2016.
Reader Comments (9)
I'm still confused by the very idea of this film, and it does feel too soon. It will take careful execution to not just feel like fanfic, and to not retroactively inflate things with significance beyond what they knew and felt at the time. All that said: Sumpter is really great in that trailer.
Oh, brookesboy.... ;-)
Granted, I love the Obamas, but I think it looks pretty charming.
Come to think of it, if we're doing political micro-biographies as genre film, I WOULD watch a claustrophobic, psychological thriller about the 48 hour "Ted Cruz buys 100 cans of soup" incident.
This looks way better than I thought it would, but I wonder if the narrative basically hinges on where we know it's (ultimately) going. Like, a character who says, Maybe I'd like to go into politics, is usually just talking, unless we already know he's Going To Be The President. Put another way, is the film working hard enough, or coasting on context?
Yeah, it's a film that I imagine many will be a lot of baggage to. But then that probably makes the structure they've gone with the best and most appropriate one. It appears thoughtful and measured and not overly myth-building. I think it looks good and the casting is especially spot on both in terms of chemistry and also appearance.
It looks cute and charming but maybe a little drama-free? And what was with some of the strangely dark lighting, like in the restaurant when he says he'll maybe go into politics?
And I LOVED kicking off the trailer with Janet Jackson's "Miss You Much." That was a nice surprise.
I...I...I have so many theoretical objections, but that trailer charmed the SOCKS off me, not to mention the objections.
Okay this surprisingly actually looks good. Maybe too soon and too on the nose, but it still looks nice from the trailer.
Talking about too soon, don't you all know that there is a terrible movie about Obama's childhood in Jakarta that was released in Indonesia right about the time of his first inauguration? They also made a bronze statue of his child self and put it in a park here.
GOOD GOD..