Love in the Time of Coltrane

As we approach the end of summer and what sometimes feels like the end of history (cue Babylon 5 season 4 intro), I invite you fine folks to join me in appreciating a slice of both, in the form of the 2020 film Sylvie’s Love. Title: bad. Trailer: bad. Actual movie: well worth your time. It’s gentle, it’s heartfelt, and it involves zero sad animal fates, in a refreshing contrast to our last movie. It’s also our first full-fledged period romance of the newsletter,* as the title (still bad imo) has probably made clear.

We’re in Harlem in the summer of 1957. The vibes are immaculate. There aren’t nearly enough onscreen depictions of Black people moving around freely and comfortably, especially in a historical setting, extra-especially in the US. There’s a refreshing lightness to this movie’s opening scenes as we watch the characters simply exist in their neighborhood. They’re striving and struggling, and they're not immune to the impacts of racist nonsense, as we'll see down the road, but they're at least safe from white people actively breathing down their necks in this slice of their community.

We meet Robert, a talented and gorgeous saxophonist played by Nnamdi Asomugha. He's hustling for nightclub gigs with his jazz band and, for some extra cash, lands a part-time job at a record store owned by Lance Reddick.

Tbh Lance Reddick was 50% of the reason I watched this movie. He’s not in it much but every moment of his screentime is gold. His character is like a more charming version of Maurice from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, a pure-hearted Girl Dad who’s always got an idea that could almost work. In his introductory scene, he’s trying to fix an unsalvageable desk fan and is good-naturedly lamenting that his daughter spends so much time watching TV while she’s working in his store.

That daughter, of course, is Sylvie, played by Tessa Thompson. Sylvie dreams of working in the television industry and of not having to hide her spectacular clothing ensembles behind the record store’s counter. She snags Robert’s attention immediately due to

1. casually knowing a lot about music

2. being a smokeshow

Even though the first run-on sentence she speaks to him involves a reference to her fiancé, he’s only minimally deterred.

Said fiancé, a rich doctor’s son and future businessman named Lacy, is currently a soldier fighting in Korea, so the coast is mostly clear. (Thanks, Cold War geopolitics!) Sylvie’s class-conscious mother is keen to lock down the engagement, but Lance Reddick takes one look at Robert and is like, You seem cooler than the rich fiancé. You’re hired. Shoot your shot.

That’s right: This will be another entry in my “Pro-Affair” file. I’ve now created an AFFAIRS content tag so you can easily find examples of my previous affair-shipping (and anti-shipping, as the case may be) in the Historical Flicktion archive.

In my defense, I do have standards for the fictional** cheating scenarios I condone. It’s not enough for the two parties to be attractive—although if physical beauty were a power source, Asomugha and Thompson together could lead us to a carbon-zero future. To win my approval for an illicit romance, the characters need to have shared interests and/or values. For Robert and Sylvie, these include

• their overlapping passions for the performing arts

• their similar drives to succeed in their chosen careers

• their… uhhh… hang on, let me think…

• their excellent fashion sense?

• Okay, I give up; it’s mostly just that they have top-tier chemistry.

They very quickly give in to that chemistry. Robert’s somehow never met another girl who’s got good taste in music. Sylvie, less surprisingly, has never met another guy who can find the clitoris. Enabling them are Sylvie’s cousin and bff, Mona, played by a peppy Aja Naomi King, and Robert’s bff Chico, played by Regé-Jean Page before the Bridgerton check cleared.

Sidenote: I loved Mona and Chico, the down-to-earth foils to our ambitious and often self-serious leads. These two have their own lighthearted summer fling and proceed to hook up again whenever convenient, while also living their own lives—Chico as a musician and Mona as a civil rights activist. I especially love that Mona is so much fun, even as she’s offhandedly dropping cues for the audience that Important Historic Events are happening. Her closeness with Sylvie brings depth to the typically one-dimensional best-friend role, whether she and Sylvie are referencing favorite songs or discussing how far out of the barn the horse has gotten re: Sylvie and Robert’s entanglement. I would've watched an entire spinoff show about her, with Chico as a recurring character.

But TWIST: A rich white lady swoops in to appoint herself the manager of Robert’s band and immediately gets them a gig in Paris. Simultaneous TWIST: Sylvie realizes she’s pregnant.

She decides not to tell Robert about the pregnancy and declines his invitation to come with him to Europe—I guess because it'd be way harder for him to make a living saxophoning if he had a family to support, even with the dependent tax break. (And his taxes ARE gonna be a headache due to that foreign income from the Paris gig.) They say a bittersweet goodbye. He heads off to become, as Sylvie earnestly calls him, “the next John Coltrane,” and she heads off to find some fabulous maternity clothes.

Sidenote: I usually only notice costumes when they’re comically anachronistic, as in the CW masterpiece Reign. But Phoenix Mellow’s costume design impressed me so much that I’m expecting the algorithm to start feeding me trad-wife content any minute.

Fast-forward five years!

Sylvie’s now married to Lacy, who’s raising her daughter, Michelle, as his own, which tbh is more chill of him than I expected. Sylvie’s also working at a TV studio, where she lands a job as a production assistant on a cooking show produced by a fellow Black woman.

Is there more wish fulfillment than realism at work here? Sure. 1962 was the year Barbara Walters got hired as a Today Show producer. It was the year Carole Simpson, who would eventually become the first Black woman anchor for a major TV news network, graduated from college. Oprah Winfrey was eight years old. The future first-ever team of Black women TV writers, Sara Finney-Johnson and Vida Spears, were also children. So when Sylvie says, “I didn’t even know a [Black] woman television producer existed,” that’s because none actually did yet.

But TV and movies have routinely given us more Black women judges, politicians, and executives than we generally see IRL, and unlike a lot of productions, this movie is at least clear about how rare Sylvie’s situation is—which is also partly why having this role means so much to her. So I'm not withholding major historical accuracy points.

Lacy’s cool with Sylvie working… as long as her job “doesn’t interfere” with her duties as a wife and mother, e.g. providing dinner for his white boss and the white boss’s white wife. Sylvie smoothly swipes the leftover food from the cooking show demonstration to feed the white boss-couple, which is more than they deserve because they’re of course casually racist throughout the evening.

The movie only glancingly deals with the major issues of the time (which are also major issues of our time), but the dinner scene drives home how discrimination is embedded in the characters’ experiences—how it’s basically background noise, aside from the times when the volume gets cranked up. Later that night, Lacy claims the boss couple were “perfectly gracious,” and Sylvie fires back, “For bigots.” She notes that the boss has been dinged by the NAACP for discriminatory hiring practices and that the boss-wife thinks that's why Lacy’s been promoted. (Imagine an era when racists even cared enough about optics to be concerned about exposure of their racism.)

Lacy retorts, “Who cares? This account’s worth half a million dollars!” I did the math on what that translates to in modern monies and, honestly: legitimate point, Lacy. Still, it’s clear that the couple’s values are incompatible in ways they’ve been sweeping under the rug and are having more and more trouble ignoring. It's also clear that Lacy's objectively not as hot as Robert—sorry, Lacy.

But TWIST. Sylvie’s supposed to see a concert with Mona. Mona doesn’t show. (Turns out that she’s had to go to DC on short notice for her job as a civil rights activist, as one does.) While Sylvie’s waiting, Robert happens to walk by. He’s back in town, super successful with his saxophoning, and still extremely interested. They hook up again, but Sylvie doesn’t find the right moment to mention that Michelle is his kid.

It falls to Lance Reddick, ON HIS DEATHBED, to call Robert and tell him the truth. I was deeply bummed when Sylvie’s dad had a heart attack and ascended to a higher plane. It reminded me that Lance Reddick himself is no longer with us. This was the saddest I got during the entire movie.

Robert is upset that Sylvie kept this secret, but he gets over it fast, largely because Sylvie leaves Lacy. The last straw is at her dad’s visitation, when she’s trying to catch up on work and Lacy expects her to be hostessing. For the record they’re both wrong! You should not be working at a time like this. You should also not be primarily concerned with refilling people’s refreshments or whatnot during a time like this.

Anyway, Sylvie ends her marriage with a barnburner of a line: “I can’t be the woman of your dreams while also trying to be the woman of my own.” Lacy says some stuff too but let’s be honest, nobody cares. Sorry once again, Lacy. Maybe you can join a support group with Kerry Washington’s exes.***

For the first time, Sylvie and Robert can get together properly. Robert meets and creates a relationship with Michelle. Sylvie remains excellent at her job. Everyone continues to be impeccably dressed. At this point, without checking how much runtime was left, I was like, Wow, this is wrapping up kind of tidily and quietly, I guess that’s fine…

But TWIST.

Robert isn’t making enough money from his saxophoning. His bandmate owns the copyright to all their songs, so most of the profits of their success have gone to that guy, whose name is literally Dickie.

Sidenote: Dickie’s also cheating on his wife with the rich white-lady manager, which Robert finds appalling despite the fact that his own love story depends on undermining a preexisting relationship.

So Robert tries to strike out on his own. But jazz, according to the white gatekeeper he approaches about going solo, is OVER. Rock ‘n’ roll has entered the chat. Robert’s no longer a hot commodity.

He thinks he’s got a job lead with Motown in Detroit, though. He’s so confident about it that he asks Sylvie if she’d consider moving out there with him. (No!) She immediately says yes (no!!!) even though it’d mean leaving her own job and starting from scratch at another TV studio (noooooo but I mean, you do you, I’m rooting for you either way).

Additional TWIST: Robert was wrong. His contact at Motown was… joking??? He shows up in Detroit, adorably buys Michelle a stuffed animal in response to her request for a dog, and then gets DEVASTATED.

At this point I was like, Oh man, is this gonna end BADLY? I did not sign up for a movie that ends badly!!! Will no one think of this white lady's cortisol levels?!

Robert now feels he has nothing to offer Sylvie. He doesn’t want her to feel obligated to support him financially—or to leave her own job to hold down the domestic fort while he returns to blue-collar work. So, without mentioning that the Motown gig fell through, he breaks up with her!!! He tells her he’s not actually a family man!!! Sylvie, understandably infuriated by this unexplained heel-turn, tells him to gtfo without even giving him a chance to say goodbye to Michelle.

But some time later, Sylvie's visiting Mona in DC (shortly after the March on Washington, which Mona offhandedly mentions having helped organize). While there, she finds out through a mutual acquaintance—randomly played by Eva Longoria!—that Robert’s working at a Detroit steel plant, not Scrooge-McDuck-ing in money at Motown like Sylvie thought.

It’s Mona who reflects that Robert probably didn’t want Sylvie to give up the life she’d worked so hard for. She helpfully points out to Sylvie and the audience that this isn’t so different from Sylvie keeping her pregnancy a secret so that Robert wouldn’t have to derail the launch of his career. The tables of misguided loving gestures HAVE TURNED. Somebody call the ghost of O. Henry.

The only time I teared up during the movie, other than when Lance Reddick dies, is when Sylvie says goodbye to Mona after this visit. They’ve got a longstanding tradition of swapping favorite songs: favorite song of the summer, favorite song from X year, etc. Sylvie prompts Mona: “Favorite song for this moment?” And Mona replies, “The Best Is Yet to Come.” Dang, Mona. We don’t deserve you.

So the next time Robert walks out of the plant after his shift, Sylvie’s there waiting for him. They don’t discuss whether she’ll move to Detroit and take a lower-level job at the TV station there while he keeps working at the plant (please no), or whether he’ll move back to NYC and be the coolest-ever stay-at-home dad while she keeps the high-powered position she relishes (YES; just my two cents). They don’t even kiss in this scene, but they do hold hands as they walk to her car, and when they get there they stop to talk. Although by that point we’re zoomed out too far to hear what they say, I trust they’ll find a way to make things work.

The closing credits sequence validates my confidence: We see Robert performing again (with Lance Reddick’s old saxophone!), Sylvie continuing to rock at her job, and the family of three thriving. I actually stopped the movie too soon at first, like a rube, and then was delighted to discover how much footage I’d missed. Writer-director Eugene Ashe managed to cram in enough postscript material to rival The Return of the King. Good for him. Give the people (me) what they want (characters being happy and fulfilled).

Plot, pacing, and structure: 3. The pacing’s a bit uneven, and some of the twists verge on melodrama, but I was never bored, and I never stopped feeling invested in the story.

Characters: 4. Without the benefit of a lot of dialogue, the leads convey the characters’ personalities and emotions super effectively. The side characters make the most of their limited screen time. Lance Reddick was/is a national treasure.

Historical accuracy: 4. All the characters are fictional, so I don’t need to vet them for fidelity to historical figures. I’m not an expert on the 1950s-60s, but the broad strokes of the characters’ situations and the larger events/circumstances surrounding them seem to check out. And have I mentioned that the costumes are exquisite?

Themes: 4. “I wanted you to be happy, even if I couldn’t be a part of your life.” Love is worth turning your world upside down for. Don’t invite N*zis to dinner no matter how much the account is worth. Relationships can only work if there’s solid communication! It’s never too late to begin again. Jazz is never over!!! The best is yet to come.

*Unless you’re counting A Little Chaos, which I don’t, due to the male lead having slept through it.

**Always fictional! IRL affairs are not condoned! If you’re Ewan McGregor, stop reading this and double whatever amount of money you’re paying your ex-wife.

***Asomugha has been married to Kerry Washington since 2013, in case you were not familiar with his game.