By Ben Pearson/Sept. 29, 2020 1:30 pm EST
I’ll leave it at that for now, but trust me: you’re going to want to see this movie. It was the sexiest film I saw at Sundance 2020, and not only are Thompson and Asomugha both incredibly charismatic and vibrant performers, but their chemistry is through the roof here. It’s all captured with gorgeous, lush cinematography, costumes, and production design which effortlessly transport you into the heart of this story. Eugene Ashe is the writer and director, and after seeing what he did with this movie, he is now extremely high on my list of rising filmmakers to watch. He’s a former musician, which likely speaks to why the music in this movie is so good: not only is it a central part of the narrative, but Fabrice Lecomte’s jazzy score completely swept me away when I heard it for the first time.
In my review, I called Sylvie’s Love “an exquisite piece of old-school filmmaking, one in which star-crossed lovers and rain-soaked streets and a heart-achingly beautiful score combine to transport us into a sort of cinematic Twilight Zone where such a movie would have been placed right alongside contemporaries like The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, From Here to Eternity, or Roman Holiday.” I also said it’s “a soaring, swooning, old-school throwback that’s primarily concerned with wrapping the audience in a sumptuous cinematic blanket of jazz, ambition, and starry-eyed enchantment. And boy, does it ever.”
