Sylvie s Love. Amazon Studios
There are films that invite the viewer in by emanating an energy so lush and warm that you long to continue living in that world even after the runtime has ended. I get this feeling whenever I watch one of Douglas Sirk s 1950s melodramas that, despite holding up a mirror to serious themes like racism, classism and Puritanical social mores, offer a kind of comfort and splendor in their Technicolor richness and grounded translations of mid-century American pathos.
That same energy radiates through Eugene Ashe s
Sylvie s Love, a stylishly moody period drama riffing on love and desire both romantic and professional. In the steamy New York summer of 1957, Sylvie (Tessa Thompson) is a young woman from a well-to-do family with dreams of working in television; for the time being, she s helping her dad Herbert (Lance Reddick) look after their family-owned record shop. When the talented saxophonist Robert (Nnamdi Asomugha) drops in one day to inqu
Dec. 23, 2020 3:20 pm ET
Eugene Asheâs âSylvieâs Love,â streaming on Amazon, takes place in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and looks like one of those lush, deliciously glossy Technicolor romances that Ross Hunter might have produced and Douglas Sirk might have directed, except for one readjustment of the formula. Most of the people in it are Black. Whatâs startling about that is how unstartling it is until you stop to think about those old films and how narrow their spectrum was.
The pleasure of this one, partly set in a jazz milieu, is its embrace of all the conventionsânot just the melodrama and the star-crossed lovers but careerist ambition, emergent feminism, cultural pretension. The heroineâs mother, Eunice (Erica Gimpel), presides over a Harlem finishing school that prepares proper little girls for cotillion. Sheâs so pretentious that she asks a young jazz saxophonist if he studied at a conservatory. Some of that must have rub
Soul, and Meryl Streep in
Let Them All Talk.
Warner Bros. / Disney/Pixar / HBO
The year is nearly over, and the holidays often mean extra time for getting cozy on the couch with some eggnog and a pile of cookies, in front of a good movie. Given public health concerns and ongoing widespread theater closings in the US, most of 2020’s best movies are available to watch right now via streaming services and digital rentals.
A few of those movies are still quite new, thanks to a bumper crop of December releases that’s yielded options for all sorts of movie-viewing preferences from blockbuster-size superhero tales (the long-awaited
Let Sylvie s Love Wrap You In All Its Goodness
Sylvie s Love.
Amazon Studios
There are films that invite the viewer in by emanating an energy so lush and warm that you long to continue living in that world even after the runtime has ended. I get this feeling whenever I watch one of Douglas Sirk s 1950s melodramas that, despite holding up a mirror to serious themes like racism, classism and Puritanical social mores, offer a kind of comfort and splendor in their Technicolor richness and grounded translations of mid-century American pathos.
That same energy radiates through Eugene Ashe s
Sylvie s Love, a stylishly moody period drama riffing on love and desire both romantic and professional. In the steamy New York summer of 1957, Sylvie (Tessa Thompson) is a young woman from a well-to-do family with dreams of working in television; for the time being, she s helping her dad Herbert (Lance Reddick) look after their family-owned record shop. When the talented saxophonist Robert (Nna