Southside with You (2016)
Directed by Richard Tanne
Chronicles a single day in the summer of 1989 when the future president of the United States, Barack Obama, wooed his future First Lady on an epic first date across Chicago's South Side.
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What critics compared Southside with You to
Imagine a cross between John Ford’s “Young Mr. Lincoln” and Richard Linklater’s “Before Sunrise,” and you get a sense of the tone of a movie that tiptoes to the edge of hagiography but never falls in, at least entirely.
Earning comparisons to “Before Sunrise” with, of course, completely different threads dealing with race, ambition and the city of Chicago itself, writer-director Richard Tanne’s feature debut, aside from a few clunky bits of exposition about certain real people, strikes a delicate balance between lighthearted flirtation and substantive discussion.
Perhaps taking Richard Linklater's "Before Sunrise" as a model, the film — which opens Friday at multiple theaters — presents an abbreviated chronicle of the several hours shared by the wary and formal Robinson and the more confident, shirt-sleeved and slightly scheming Obama during what Michelle repeatedly insists is not a date.
Tanne's film follows the first date of the future first couple, "Before Sunrise" style.
There are times when “Southside” feels like the perfect mashup of “Before Sunrise,” “Shakespeare in Love,” “Love & Basketball” and the John Ford classic “Young Mr. Lincoln.”
Like “ Before Sunrise ,” a film which invites comparison, “Southside with You” is a two-hander that's top-heavy with dialogue, walking and a knowing sense of location.
That neither party knows what the evening will bring; that first they’ll take in an Afrocentric art exhibit, then a showing of Spike Lee’s “Do The Right Thing,” then become the world’s most powerful couple.
But as the two wend their way through a day that will include an art exhibit, a community meeting at a church, a screening of “Do the Right Thing” and a fateful ice cream cone, her intransigence begins to soften.
She feels that any romantic relationship between them would be a bad idea—she says she has to work hard to be taken seriously at the office as a woman, and doubly so as a black woman--and a growing recognition of the appeal offered by this practical idealist with the beat-up car taking her to the Art Institute, to a community meeting at church (which apparently may not have happened on the first date) and to see “Do the Right Thing.”
The setting is Chicago's South Side, and the year is 1989, which justifies the Janet Jackson on the soundtrack and a fascinating scene in which Michelle and Barack attend a controversial new film, "Do the Right Thing"; Spike Lee's provocative movie mirrors, in expressionistic fashion, the hourslong debate over racial identity, social responsibility and "Afrocentric" art that runs through Barack and Michelle's day together.
That night they take in Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing.”
Even the beloved founder of this site, Roger Ebert , gets a shout-out for championing “ Do the Right Thing ," the movie Barack and Michelle attend in the closing hours of their date.