Harlem-Set 'Sylvie's Love' To Premiere On Prime Video This Week

NEW YORK (Dec. 21, 2020) — From New York native and writer-director Eugene Ashe, “Sylvie’s Love” is a heartwarming and realistic portrayal of young love and how it can expand, mature and even strengthen over time.

Set in Harlem in the late 1950s, the beautiful and simple story follows Robert (Nnamdi Asomugha), a saxophonist who gets a day job working at a record store simply because he has a crush on the girl behind the counter, Sylvie (Tessa Thompson). She whiles away the summer afternoons at the shop, watching every television program she can find, laughing at “I Love Lucy” and dancing around the empty store to Billy Haley and the Comets.

Their easy way with each other is a joy to watch, and the serene first act of the film finds their mutual love of music and art transforming effortlessly into love for each other. But they’re soon reminded of reality: Sylvie is already engaged to a man serving in Korea, and soon Robert and his jazz quartet are offered a high-powered gig in Paris.

Though its early love story is endearing, the narrative is only stronger when it picks up five years later and finds Sylvie as a wife and mother, trying to achieve her dream of working in television when a chance encounter with Robert reminds her who she always wanted to be. It is this element of “Sylvie’s Love” that is exceptional - the idea that its two main characters are grounded in something other than each other, but still want to be together.

The love between Sylvie and Robert feels real - the kind of deep and real love that is not mere infatuation - what writer Kevin Williamson said “goes beyond friendship, beyond lovers.” This is a film about deep and abiding love, which sometimes means sacrifice and separation. It’s especially enjoyable to see Thompson playing a woman of that time period with hopes beyond her husband and house.

“Tessa brought her passion for women’s rights, shown in her character’s transformation from someone who is in an arranged marriage to someone who takes control of her life and makes decisions on her own,” Ashe said of the Gotham Award-winning actor and producer.

Despite its Harlem setting and often quintessentially New York feel, “Sylvie’s Love” was mostly shot on studio lots in Burbank, California. “We had a great partner in production designer Mayne Berke, who built historic Harlem and the Bronx on the Paramount and Warner Bros. Lot, which created the genuine feeling of making an old studio picture,” Ashe said. The filmmaker also has ties to New York as his hometown and is a fellow of the Writers Guild of America East Diversity Lab at Columbia University.

The characters are different from typical portrayals of the time period, which in other works can get bogged down in either saddle shoes and jukeboxes or social revolution. Something in between, “Sylvie’s Love” quietly and tastefully gets to the heart of our humanity with charming background characters played by Eva Longoria, Wendi McLendon Covey and Aja Naomi King.

The story, time period and music only add to the comfort and familiarity these characters find in each other. And it’s a warm place to be - warm as Harlem in the summer of 1957.

Amazon Studios will release “Sylvie’s Love” on Prime Video Dec. 23.