Making a movie like Southside With You strikes me as either foolish or arrogant, or, as written and directed by neophyte filmmaker Richard Tanne, arguably both. Tanne toyed with the idea for several years and although the result is sincere, respectful and dedicated, it is, regrettably, also not only on the Chicago Southside but also on the dull side.
There is relatively little interest in a first date of any pair, and if it is a famous one perhaps even a bit prurient. Especially so if they are the still incumbent President Barack Obama, and his First Lady, Michelle nee Robinson.
To be sure, Tanne has studied the unimpeachable facts, as told in books by both Barack and Michelle’s brother. But whether one can tell what is fact, and what harmless enough fiction, one is put off by awareness that there was obligatory reverence at work. Knowing how it all came out robs the film also of minimal suspense, and adds, both for performers and spectators, focus on impersonation at least as much as on acting.
It may be of some interest that Michelle was already a junior partner in a law firm, whereas Barack was still at Harvard Law School and a summer temp at the aforementioned law office. Her position as a black woman was at the time a bit precarious, and going out with a presumably younger man of inferior rank may have seemed untoward. Hence her somewhat comic stipulation that this was not a date, leaving him wondering what else it could be.
So the insistence that they were just jointly attending a community meeting at a church about the possibility and advisability of a black community center. There Barack is called upon to deploy his oratory in defense of the plan, and he speaks with admirable rhetorical command. The camera intercuts with reaction shots of Michelle, sufficiently impressed.
So things became willy nilly, a date with the pair attending a gallery exhibition by a black painter and Spike Lee’s movie Do the Right Thing. There is some park bench eating, and even Barack, a declared nonfancier of ice cream, taking a lick or two of the chocolate ice cream cone he buys for Michelle.
The dialogue throughout a drive and promenade through Michelle’s native Southside is civilized enough, and the actors, Parker Sawyers and Tika Sumpter, also a co-producer of the film, are reasonable likenesses (save for his ears) and quite personable.
Richard Tanne’s direction is genial and congenial, with a fluid camera often concentrating on telltale details, such as the messy floor of Barack’s car. Settings and camera angles seem both truthful and idiosyncratic in what might almost pass for a documentary about the Southside, as our couple drives and walks through it, the walk-and-talk aspect derived from the films of Richard Linklater, whose fan Tanne is. The cinematography, though a trifle canonizing at times, is expert enough, but that, nowadays, is pretty much a given.
I cannot, in all fairness, give the film high grades, but neither would I wish to dissuade those who feel it their patriotic duty to check it out.