Tika Sumpter and Parker Sawyers in Southside with You. Image via Umbrella Entertainment.
Imagine what the future holds – cinema asks of its audience – often answering its own question with tales of superheroes, dystopian societies, space battles and advanced technology. Southside with You ponders the same query, but on a different scale: intimate, affectionate, seemingly regular and routine. It steps back into the past to tell of two people yet to navigate lives viewers already know will come, offering the fictionalised origins of the romance between the 44th President of the United States and his First Lady.
On an ordinary Saturday in 1989, Michelle Robinson (Tika Sumpter, Ride Along 2) is adamant that she’s not going on a date, despite her parents’ good-natured teasing about the amount of effort she’s putting into her appearance. She’s attending a community meeting with a new summer associate at her Chicago law firm, she insists; if William Shakespeare was fashioning the narrative instead of first-time feature writer/director Richard Tanne, he’d likely describe her reaction as ‘the lady doth protest too much’. Answering a call from his grandmother, Barack Obama (Parker Sawyers, Snowden) contends otherwise, though he knows he might have a battle on his hands. Indeed, from the moment he arrives at Michelle’s door, she’s quick to remind him that they’re colleagues – and, at best, possibly friends.
So, they drive and walk, argue and talk, rove around an art exhibition, eat lunch in a park, hear woes in a church, and eventually have drinks, see Do The Right Thing at the cinema, and share an ice cream. Theirs is an average day as well as extraordinary one, even divorced from who they’ll become. At its core, Southside with You captures both the awkwardness and excitement of two people just getting to know each other, in a situation everyone can relate to. They’re could-be lovers on what may or may not turn out to be a date, as simple as that; becoming residents of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is so far from their minds that when Michelle brings up the subject of politics after Barack gives a rousing speech, he’s is amusingly dismissive.
Of course, Tanne doesn’t let anyone watching forget their eventual fate – or the fact that these ordinary folks will scale vast heights and achieve what many others can only dream of. Thankfully, even when he lets the President- and First-Lady-in-the-making moments linger a little too long, he grounds them in incisive insights into the city, society and country they live in, the racial divides they’re rallying against, and how that influences their identities. Accordingly, other than as a roaming romance in the same mould as Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy, Southside with You works best as both a combined character study and a snapshot of issues that remain all too relevant. As blatant as they might be, it’s impossible not to hear future echoes in Michelle’s explanation of why she has to strive harder to succeed, or in Barack’s pragmatic plea about aligning needs to get things done.
Foreshadowing abounds, but so does charm, particularly in the content that provides the film’s bulk: its conversations. Clearly comfortable when they’re caught up in chatter, Sumpter and Sawyers slide easily into their roles, inhabiting rather than impersonating their real-life inspirations. The former brandishes a determined stare that breaks just when the mood is right, while the latter flits between a confident grin and contemplative gaze. And, as they offer a glimpse of the past that gave rise to the present, both prove as warm and glowing as Patrick Scola’s (A Beautiful Now) soft-lit imagery, and as gentle yet commanding as Stephen James Taylor’s (Maya Angelou and Still I Rise) guitar-heavy refrains.
Rating: 3 stars out of 5
Southside with You
Director: Richard Tanne
USA, 2016, 84 mins
Release date: 10 November
Distributor: Umbrella
Rated: M
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