Movie Breakdown: Sylvie’s Love (Noah)
Pre-Screening Stance:
Tessa Thompson starring in a film about relationships and jazz in the mid-century America sounds wonderful.
Post-Screening Ramble:
A lot of people argue that there really is only 16 stories for a film. I don’t know what they are, but supposedly (and I fully believe this), if you break down every film to its studs, you’ll always find one of these 16 storylines running through the middle. Sylvie’s Love – directed by Eugene Ashe – is strong evidence to this theory. So much so that as I watched Thompson and her co-star Nnamdi Asomugha fall in love on screen only to be torn apart by the circumstances of their time, I wondered to myself, “Why did anyone ever make this movie?” Not because it’s badly made or badly acted or even terribly written if you’re in for bland comfort, but because it doesn’t do anything of note. It doesn’t use its setting – New York in the 1960s – for anything besides a backdrop. Tessa Thompson’s Sylvie – a woman trying to be more than her station of the time allows her to be – is fine, but her story and her dialogue feel pulled from other movies. It can’t be easy to act interestingly when the growth of your character is so easily predicted. The most interesting parts of the film – Lance Reddick in a rare nice guy role – are sidelined, used as formulaic plot devices when the film needs to do whatever it is that’s next. I recently read the term “ambient television” – content created solely to be placed in the background – and maybe, Sylvie’s Love could be this – a slightly pleasant bit of film and sound to have streaming in a window on your computer. Even then though, you might forget it’s even on.
One Last Thought:
The New York City shown in this film feels like a New York City filmed during a pandemic. There’s no one on the streets. There’s rarely a car driving or construction happening. It isn’t a New York that has ever existed. And it makes you think, maybe this film was supposed to be a fable, or like a musical, but all of the magic and music was chopped out and instead we’re left with this bland piece of unbuttered toast.
