![]() (It’s also coded into his costume: shirt sleeves rolled up to just below the elbow, vest just visible underneath, and so on. ![]() But his body language is so diligently matched to his subject’s that it’s soon shockingly easy to believe you’re watching the real thing. Richard Tanne’s Southside with You, starring Tika Sumpter and Parker Sawyers, is a warmhearted and sharp-witted dramatization of the Obamas’ first date. In his performance, Sawyers smartly avoids broad impersonation (Sumpter too, for that matter, though of the two she’s the uncannier lookalike). Or there is until Sawyers deploys a certain look – a downturned half-frown, head tipped slightly back – that’s such an unmistakable Obama Manoeuvre, the character immediately flashes to life. From the start, to coin a topical slogan, we’re with her – which positions Barack (Sawyers) as the unknown quantity.Īccordingly, when Tanne cuts to him relaxing in an armchair, drawing peckishly on a cigarette, there’s less to go on. The film opens on Michelle (Sumpter), rather than her would-be wooer – getting dressed, fixing her hair, and generally going to “an awful lot of trouble for just another smooth talker,” as her mother (Vanessa Bell) drily observes. Southside With You all but begs you to unpick every line and gesture for shivery echoes of the future, and it’s to first-time writer-director Tanne’s credit – and, equally, that of his perfectly chosen leads, Parker Sawyers and Tika Sumpter – that the film not only withstands but thrives under such scrutiny. But here it’s imbued with the eye-catching lustre of momentousness-in-waiting. This clear-eyed and compulsively charming romantic comedy gives a semi-fictional account of Barack and Michelle Obama’s first date in Chicago, 1989 – an event described in undramatic terms by the outgoing US President in his 2006 book The Audacity of Hope – just a trip to the cinema to see Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing and a shared ice cream. 12A cert, 84 mins.īeing the leader of the free world has never looked like a walk in the park, but Richard Tanne’s Southside With You turns a walk in the park into a dry run for just that. ![]() Director: Richard Tanne. Starring: Parker Sawyers, Tika Sumpter, Vanessa Bell Calloway, Phillip Edward Van Lear. ![]()
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