Prime-Video - Sylvie’s Love - Starring Tessa Thompson & Nnamdi Asomugha, available December 25

By Mulder, 02 november 2020

“French writer Albert Camus once said, “But that is love, to give away everything, to sacrifice everything --
without the slightest desire to get anything in return.”. Sylvie’s Love is an ode to the unstoppable force of love in our lives. The story centers on unapologetic and confident Sylvie, who takes control of her life in unexpected ways. She meets Robert, a talented saxophonist, and they kindle a deep forbidden passion in each other. As time passes, the world changes -- the sexual revolution begins, and Motown becomes king --but while Sylvie and Robert may fall in and out of each other’s arms, they never fall out of love. The film is a passion project for me; inspired by old photographs of my family from the 1950’s, and seeing the way they carried themselves with such dignity, I wanted to create a love story that showed the sacrifices and tribulations of true love. And as a former Sony recording artist, my relationship with my bandmates informed the camaraderie Robert shares with his. So it was important to me to create a story that put art, music, and love in the forefront, set in a world of old Hollywood glamour that’s been lost in time. “ - Eugene Ashe

Writer and director Eugene Ashe combines romance and music into a sweeping story that brings together changing times, a changing culture, and the true price of love in Sylvie’s love, starring Tessa Thompson (Thor, Westworld) in the titular role and Nnamdi Asomugha (Crown Heights). The film also has a stellar supporting cast, including Aja Naomi King (How To Get Away With Murder), Jemima Kirke (Girls), Alano Miller (Loving), Wendi Mclendon-Covey (Bridesmaids) and Eva Longoria (Desperate Housewives).

For Composer Fabrice Lecomte, joining Sylvie’s Love was almost fated. “My first cousin is an actress, and she often worked with Nina Ashe, the wife of Sylvie's Love writer-director Eugene Ashe; my cousin got married in New Jersey a few years ago. While I was waiting and socializing, Eugene walks in very elegantly dressed -- very smart. He's got wonderful taste and elegance in everything he does; I complimented him on his bow tie and we started talking. We hit it off really well and I found out he's a big jazz fan. So am I.” Conversation, according to Lecomte, turned into collaboration: “We became friends, and he eventually explains to me that we could have more in common than we think: ‘I not only own restaurants, but I'm also a film director and a film writer. I wrote this script and I'd be really curious to see what you think.’" From the start, Lecomte knew Sylvie’s Love was going to be an exhilarating – and challenging – opportunity: “So Eugene sent the script to me; I gave him my opinion; I played him some of my music, which he liked. Of all the scripts I ever read, this immediately captured me. He told me right away, ‘I want you to do the music for this film. I like your style and I like the way you write for strings and I like the fact that you kept that European flair for melody, which has disappeared, somehow, in most of the movie scores out there.’ He would send me the latest drafts, and I would make suggestions. We would talk about the direction of the music, the direction of the movie. At some point he said, ‘Okay, so let's do this.’" According to Lecomte, Ashe’s vision was as precise as it was purposeful: “Eugene said ‘The first thing we do is -- since Robert is supposed to be the best up-and-coming tenor sax player of the early '60s -- I want you to compose the music for his quartet. They have to be all original tunes that his quartet plays, and we're going to pretend like you're making a record the same way as they would make in 1962.’ Which means great groups made of great players go into the studio, two takes max and then get out. That's exactly what we did.”

Recording with the smaller quartet soon gave way to working with much larger ensembles: “After the jazz quartet sessions, we later recorded the incidental music with 48 members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Chamber Players. No matter what you do with all these computers and gadgets, you're never really going to get a great sound. You can get a synthesized string sound and then you can add just a small string quartet on top of it so that you get the attack of the strings, but you don't get the fullness of the sound with the synthesizer. You can try everything, but you cannot fool most people.” Ask Lecomte to name the most important person who brought his score to life and light, and he can’t single it down to just one – or even just ten. “Asking me to name one person who was most important in making this score is impossible. The cinematography was out of this world. The costumes. All of the producers were wonderful with me. Nnamdi was fantastic to work with and, I was happy to see, a great actor. Tessa was amazing and the range of emotions she could show with just her big beautiful expressive eyes! It's very difficult for me to point out anybody in particular -- but because the brain of all of this is Eugene, I think he deserves to be that one person that I single out for thanks and praise.”

For Costume Designer Phoenix Mellow, chance had a role in her becoming part of the film as well. “A Costume Designer I had been an assistant to referred me to Eugene and Nnamdi, at first; later, when they were actively looking for a costume designer, I was working on an indie film with an actor who was a friend of Eugene's -- it was this weird thing where everyone seemed to already know each other.” Introductions led to inspiration: “Then I read the script and immediately was touched by the story and just felt so moved. I knew exactly how Eugene wanted to shoot it; I am a huge, huge fan of films of that era, love stories from '50s and '60s film. I grew up on that, and I could tell that he was a lover of all those films too. I sent over mood boards and ideas pretty quickly and Eugene and I clicked.” As very good luck would have it, the casting of Tessa Thompson – not only a star but a former brand ambassador for Chanel – also empowered Mellow and the moviemakers. “Tessa Thompson has over 50 costume changes through the film. I also collect clothes from this era, and so it was really a fun fashion moment for me to dress Tessa, who is a fashion icon and has an elegance to her, just like Audrey Hepburn was dressed in Roman Holiday. Our original plan was to make her outfits. We were looking at a lot of different old patterns, and we did make stuff for her. But once we expressed our interest with working with Chanel and pulling some things from their archives -- because Tessa is one of the faces of their brand, she was an ambassador at the time -- it made it very easy to obtain dresses. They didn't send us hundreds and hundreds of dresses and we also did not request hundreds and hundreds of dresses. We were very specific about the color and the cut. They know what fits Tessa, they know her size … so it really was hitting two birds with one stone for us.”

Soon, Mellow and writer-director Ashe were looking at the legendary archives of one of fashion’s bestknown names like highly selective kids in a candy store: “Karl Lagerfeld is an amazing designer and we were lucky to use some of his pieces in our movie. Eugene was the one who got to look through the Chanel archive and be like, ‘Maybe we should have this one and maybe we should request this dress just to see,’ and I would either be like, ‘That doesn't look '60s at all,’ or, ‘Oh my gosh, that's so brilliant. You know, let's try it.’ I I thought Girl, you have the dream come true, you are living a Cinderella life. That's how it felt for us: Oh, we have this movie and Tessa is working with Chanel and this seems to all coincide. It was for us, really lucky to be able to combine all these elements that I love and Eugene loves.’ The men of the cast received similar care and attention when it came to their on-screen wardrobe: “The suit-and-tie look of the jazz band and Nnamdi's character Robert, that was based off of Sydney Poitier and John Coltrane. I was looking up Sonny Rollins and Miles Davis's stage ensembles. I would say 95% of the clothing in the film is actually vintage -- or at least 90% of the film. All of Nnamdi's suits are vintage, they're almost 70 or 60 years old -- and he is a tall guy.” Despite the highly cinematic look and feel of Sylvie’s Love, Mellow also had help making sure her work didn’t just come from the big screen: “I have a real love for old photos and rare images of the past and yes, for sure, album covers and images from old costume designers that did films at the time or fashion designers. We looked at movies like Funny Face and Paris Blues and Carmen Jones and High Society and Pillow Talk and Marjorie Morningstar with Natalie Wood -- Eugene's obsessed with that movie. But it was also personal and intimate while doing the research: Eugene would share his old family photos with me and be like, ‘Oh, I want this -- look at my aunt's shoes.’" Mellow may have a perfectionists’ eye, but that doesn’t mean she can’t look at Sylvie’s Love with real satisfaction: “The first time I saw the film, Eugene was scrolling through it quickly in his office, and the whole time I was wanting to cry because I was thinking, This is the most amazing thing I've ever seen. The second time that I watched it was at Sundance, and I was super proud of us. I'm proud of what we all put together for Sylvie's Love.”

Synopsis :
In Sylvie’s Love, the jazz is smooth and the air sultry in the hot New York summer of 1957. Robert (Nnamdi Asomugha), a saxophonist, spends late nights playing behind a less-talented but well-known bandleader, as member of a jazz quartet. Sylvie (Tessa Thompson), who dreams of a career in television, spends her summer days helping around her father’s record store, as she waits for her fiancé to return from war. When Robert takes a part-time job at the record store, the two begin a friendship that sparks a deep passion in each of them unlike anything they have felt before. As the summer winds down, life takes them in different directions, bringing their relationship to an end. Years pass, Sylvie’s career as a TV producer blossoms, while Robert has to come to terms with what the age of Motown is doing to the popularity of Jazz. In a chance meeting, Sylvie and Robert cross paths again, only to find that while their lives have changed, their feelings for each other remain the same..

Sylvie's Love
Written and directed by Eugene Ashe
Produced by Eugene Ashe, Nnamdi Asomugha, Gabrielle Glore, Jonathan Baker, Matthew Thurm
Starring Tessa Thompson, Nnamdi Asomugha, Ryan Michelle Bathe, Aja Naomi King, Eva Longoria
Music by Fabrice Lecomte
Cinematography : Declan Quinn
Edited by Dana Congdon
Production companies : Iam21 Entertainment, Seven Letter Word Films
Distributed by Amazon Studios
Release date : January 27, 2020 (Sundance), December 25, 2020 (United States)
Running time : 114 minutes

(Source : press release)