Review: 'Sylvie's Love' A Gorgeous Production but a Missed Opportunity

With writer-director Eugene Ashe's period drama "Sylvie's Love," Amazon Studios create a beautifully produced, but tepid, love story that's been assembled in a paint-by-numbers fashion.

Sylvie (Tessa Thompson) is filling in one summer at the record store owned by her father when Robert (Nnamdi Asomugha), who's looking for a new record album, spots her through the window. It's love at first sight - even though Sylvie, who's obsessed with television and yearns to break into production, doesn't notice him at first. Even after her father hires Robert, she doesn't really notice him... until she does.

But it's not that simple. The rub is threefold: First, Sylvie's mother, who teaches young ladies etiquette, doesn't approve of Robert. Second, Robert belongs to a jazz quartet that has, improbably enough, come to the attention of a wealthy music connoisseur called The Countess (Jemima Kirke), who has taken it on herself to become their manager and set them up with a gig in Paris. And third, Sylvie is engaged to someone else.

Such obstacles melt away in the passion of young love, of course, and Sylvie ends up pregnant - a development she withholds from Robert, not wanting to divert him from his burgeoning career.

All of this is told in flashback, after a brief introduction that sees the star-crossed lovers unexpectedly reunited. What happens next is every bit as torn from a familiar playbook, but suffice to say that lifelong dreams start coming true, foolish male pride gets in the way, and missed connections cause the drama to go on far longer than the film manages to sustain much interest.

Not that the performances aren't fine, especially Thompson's. Kirke, as The Countess, doesn't have as much screen time as one might like, and nor do the members of the quarter Robert plays in, which is a shame, because all of these characters have intriguing moments that promise to open up into something more, only for that promise to be left largely unfulfilled. Kirke's Countess, especially, is a fascinating mix, a combination of monied elegance and street-smart swagger, right down to the way she licks a gloved thumb while counting out hundred-dollar bills.

Aja Naomi King, as Sylvie's devoted cousin Mona, fares a little better; she's a touchstone for the movie, anchoring the storyline as it moves through time, though her character feels thinly written and contrived specifically for that purpose.

The plot is adequate, though predictable in a beat-by-beat way. But that's all it is; the 1960s setting allows "Sylvie's Love" to touch upon the civil rights movement and the question of deeply embedded racism in employment and in American culture at large, but those brief acknowledgements feel tossed in rather than organically connected to either the story or the characters, and references to, say, the 1963 March on Washington or, more broadly, television's resistance to talented people of color don't probe very far or illustrate much.

It's hard to tell whether the film or the viewer gets bored first, but by the end a sense of tedium has definitely set in. Even the direction and performances - which possess energy at the start - begin to lose their drive as the film labors on.

What remains strong throughout is Declan Quinn's gorgeous cinematography and the production design by Mayne Berke. The score, by Fabrice Lecomte, is well done, also, though the film wisely allows period music to set much of the tone, as it were, on that front.

If you're looking for a love story with a strong dose of idealized nostalgia, or a little bit of sweet (and sanitized) background cinema for the holiday season, this effort will fill the bill.

"Sylvie's Love" streams at Amazon Prime starting Dec. 23.