By Chad Nance

In around three months, when the dust has cleared on what has been a historically ridiculous presidential election cycle, the American people will look back wistfully at the last eight years and realize that we have squandered our time with President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle. We have treated two amazing people with the kind of low class, jug head hyperbole more befitting a pair of vapid reality show celebrities. There is probably not much to be done about it now, but history may very well prove us to be a vast collective of loosely connected morons.

“Southside with You” is a new independent film that does a stately job of telling the story of President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama’s first date. It’s a mix of a gentle version of hagiography seen in John Ford’s more blunt, “Young Mr. Lincoln” with an attempt at the kind of philosophical and psychological depth seen in Richard Linklater’s “Before Sunrise”. Writer/director Tanne must wrestle with layers of politics which constrained him in ways that Ford and Linklater were not. The film had to carry the weight of history, and the knowledge that these two young people will one day be both celebrated and wrongly vilified during a presidency that revealed to the world a progressive, hopeful America and exposed this nation’s darkest instincts. Tanne struggles to present his slight narrative and due to his canonization of these extraordinary people, is unable to truly plumb their depths (or lack of them) as characters.

Tanne Introduces both Barack and Michelle with sharp definition and a disciplined economy that is all sheen and craft. Visually he stays out of the way, but works with cinematographer Patrick Scola to create an evocative palette that manages to have both an idealized nostalgia and naturalistic grittiness. Make no mistake, however, Tanne is creating icons and is keenly aware of the Obama’s historical and cultural importance to the African American community and for Gen-Xer’s and Millennials. While he goes about the delightful business of planting easter eggs and references to Barack Obama’s future presidency, no care is made to do the same for the coming morass of darkness and violence battering the Southside of Chicago today.

What is left, however, is a delightful film that manages to ask some serious questions, even when it doesn’t pay off in answers. While it dodges the real issues of oppression, injustice, anger, and violence while still using “Do the Right Thing” for a cultural beat, “Southside” makes a profound and reasoned argument for moderation and political compromise. This theme of working slowly and deliberately to achieve political goals filters down into the meek, but persistent way legal intern Barack Obama romances one of his supervisors, the imminently capable and emotionally guarded Michelle Robinson.

Parker Sawyers creates an earnest and playful Barack Obama whose discipline and intellectual curiosity are self created on a face of anger and resentment leveled at his father. This Barack Obama has an acute self awareness as it comes to race and where exactly he does, or more often does not, fit in with white or black society. Sawyers ably walks a line here between impression and interpretation of the man who would go on to become President of the United States. A most remarkable aspect of this characterization is how it lets Barack’s vulnerability and boyishness shine through. There is a dark current of cynicism running through Sawyer’s work, but he finds the hopeful and playful core in Obama’s charisma.

Tika Sumpter anchors the film with her mature nobility and a bottled up sexiness that manages to reassure there is a powerful woman inside of the shell while at the same time refuses to tease in a conventional way. Sumpter fully inhabits Michelle Robinson’s pragmatism and solidness while allowing her to breathe as a romantic lead. “Southside”’s Michelle is not driven by the same forces that push Barack. She is motivated by equal parts love and ambition working desperately to find a way to blend both in a way that works for her and the community at large. Her sense of duty to her family, her community, and herself provides a solid baseline for a female characterization that has no need to falling into the tired, accepted tropes of the young, single woman peddled in most modern romantic comedies.

The humor and the grace of “Southside With You” creates a level of surface charm that goes down easy and rewards the viewer with a legitimate appeal to our better angels. Perhaps, like his hero, President Lincoln, President Obama’s legacy will be written after his time in office. During Lincoln’s time in the White House the tumult of political divisiveness and hatred surrounding his person would be recognizable to anyone who has lived through the successful attempts at unfair demonization of Barack and Michelle Obama. After Lincoln’s time he was lionized and turned into a marble icon once the full scope of his achievements could be examined through the lens of history. Perhaps that will happen in the next few years as people realize what we will lose as a nation when our next President is sworn in- no matter who she or he is. “Southside with You” is good enough a piece of filmmaking to become a small part of building the coming icon and it is nice to watch a film about two empathetic young people filled with energy, promise, and hope.

Southside With You is currently screening at a/perture cinema. A trailer, show times and ticket information are available by clicking HERE.