When Barack Met Michelle...
The first biographical film about the first black President of the United States is an epic, both in scope and execution, right? A film that stands alongside Steven Spielberg's ode to the political calculus and human depth of Abraham Lincoln and Oliver Stone's empathetic portrait of a complex, tragic Richard Nixon? Actually, no... and yes. Writer/director Richard Tanne's Southside with You is an intimate look at a pivotal moment in the lives of young lawyer Michelle Robinson and her summertime work subordinate Barack Obama. Their first date is a day spent roaming around the Southside of Chicago. It's the perfect moment to spend with them because it glimpses their futures without delving into either character's long term ambitions. Southside with You simply gets who these people were at the time, and it's a testament to their own respective characters that politics hasn't changed much of who they are since.
The previously unknown Parker Sawyers is phenomenal as Barack Obama. Despite a rough resemblance to the actual man, where Sawyers captures Obama's character is in his voice and temperament. He's charming, smart, and just a bit cocky, but in the disarming sort of way that makes him a believable leading man. It's the same quality that makes the real Obama a political superstar. Tika Sumpter, a producer on the film, isn't as seamless as a young Michelle, though the timber in her voice and her physical poise make her approximation of the real Michelle one that fully works for the film. She has the harder job than Sawyers, as he plays a man with a more particular—and more iconic—speaking style, but placed next to Sawyers' flawless Obama, Sumpter's Michelle fits in comfortably.
The whole of Southside with You works with the same ease. The actors don't feel like they're acting for the most part, and any hint of dramatization fades as the film goes on. Tanne takes the authenticity, intelligence and confidence of the Obamas and translates it to the overall tone of the film. As a filmmaker, he's more interested in how Barack and Michelle became the people they are outside of politics. Obama's political philosophy is on display—as is Sawyer's uncanny embodiment of Obama on the stump—in a scene where he speaks before a community organizing group, but not his ideology. It's about how Obama thinks people can work together to get things done. It's a demonstration of his wisdom despite his youth, matched here only by Michelle's maturity beyond her years.
Southside with You is not a film with great heft. It's smart and seemingly accurate while being light on its feet, but that's a virtue. The best thing about it is how it allows the viewer to know Barack and Michelle as people outside of the things that make them iconic, and without caricature. These are just two real people living a day in their lives, and that's hard to capture authentically with such recognizable figures at the center of the film. As they're likely the most documented President and First Lady in history (due to the internet and smartphones, in addition to traditional media), it only makes sense to use the intimacy afforded by cinema to get to know these icons before either had an inkling of their future together. Other Obama films will surely be made as their time in Washington enters the history books (one about Obama's years at Columbia is out next month), but Southside with You is the perfect way to first approach them in cinema; it's optimistic and smart with an eye toward the future, just like its subjects.