![]() ![]() If you haven't seen Linklater's trilogy that chronicles a couple meeting and spending a single night together that was little more than that in 1995 it is the epitome of characters walking and talking. ![]() It's a clichéd comparison at this point, but an apt one as the majority of Southside With You is filled by our two main characters walking and talking. And so, yes, Southside With You is the story of the first date between the now President and First Lady of these United States of America via the lens of something akin to director Richard Linklater's Before trilogy. Or is she? It just so happens this young, summer associate is a hotshot from Harvard named Barack Obama (Parker Sawyers). As the lone African-American woman working at this law firm Robinson has had to work doubly hard in order to gain the respect she desires and she's not about to let the first charismatic, smooth-talking black guy convince her to undo all that hard work by going on a date with him. It is 1989 and Michelle Robinson (Tika Sumpter) is getting set to accompany the summer associate she is advising at the law firm she works for to a town meeting to address local community issues. From the opening scene Southside With You sets the tone of a late summer day on the streets of Chicago at the tail end of that decade we've all suddenly become enamored with nostalgia for. Especially when it's "Miss You Much," coupled with eighties inspired pink text flashing across the screen. (It’s also coded into his costume: shirt sleeves rolled up to just below the elbow, vest just visible underneath, and so on.Any movie that decides to play Janet Jackson over its opening credits is off to a good start. But his body language is so diligently matched to his subject’s that it’s soon shockingly easy to believe you’re watching the real thing. In his performance, Sawyers smartly avoids broad impersonation (Sumpter too, for that matter, though of the two she’s the uncannier lookalike). Or there is until Sawyers deploys a certain look – a downturned half-frown, head tipped slightly back – that’s such an unmistakable Obama Manoeuvre, the character immediately flashes to life. ![]() From the start, to coin a topical slogan, we’re with her – which positions Barack (Sawyers) as the unknown quantity.Īccordingly, when Tanne cuts to him relaxing in an armchair, drawing peckishly on a cigarette, there’s less to go on. The film opens on Michelle (Sumpter), rather than her would-be wooer – getting dressed, fixing her hair, and generally going to “an awful lot of trouble for just another smooth talker,” as her mother (Vanessa Bell) drily observes. Southside With You all but begs you to unpick every line and gesture for shivery echoes of the future, and it’s to first-time writer-director Tanne’s credit – and, equally, that of his perfectly chosen leads, Parker Sawyers and Tika Sumpter – that the film not only withstands but thrives under such scrutiny. But here it’s imbued with the eye-catching lustre of momentousness-in-waiting. This clear-eyed and compulsively charming romantic comedy gives a semi-fictional account of Barack and Michelle Obama’s first date in Chicago, 1989 – an event described in undramatic terms by the outgoing US President in his 2006 book The Audacity of Hope – just a trip to the cinema to see Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing and a shared ice cream. 12A cert, 84 mins.īeing the leader of the free world has never looked like a walk in the park, but Richard Tanne’s Southside With You turns a walk in the park into a dry run for just that. Director: Richard Tanne. Starring: Parker Sawyers, Tika Sumpter, Vanessa Bell Calloway, Phillip Edward Van Lear. ![]()
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