In Sylvie’s love (available on Amazon Prime Video since December 23, 2020) Eugene Ashe by the young Sylvie, who ran into Robert in her father’s record store at the end of the 1950s and developed feelings for him, even though she was already engaged. We talked to the director and screenwriter about the choice of the setting, the search for the right ensemble and the choice of the right love.
Could you tell us a little about the background of Sylvie’s love betray. How and when did you come up with the idea for the film?
The idea came to me while looking at old photographs of my family. Films that take place in the past and tell of the black population in the USA mostly do so from the perspective of the civil rights movement. But I wanted to make a film that focuses entirely on the characters and shows their existence as people. The idea was to make a love story because love is a universal feeling that everyone can identify with. In the 50s and 60s we not only had people who fought for black rights, but also people like Sammy Davis Jr., Nat King Cole and Miles Davis, great artists.
But why this time? You could have made a film at another time. There was love and music before and after too.
That’s true. But I think that this was a particularly exciting time, when a lot was changing. The women tried beforehand to adapt to this ideal world picture that existed in the USA, in which women stayed at home and men went to work. But then came Betty Friedan’s book in the early 1960s The Feminine Mystique out and the women developed the urge to be more than a housewife, perhaps to have a job themselves. At the same time there was a lot going on musically. Jazz was no longer so popular and was replaced by pop music and Motown. And I found that this background of a changing society went well with the respective developments at Sylvie and Robert.
You weren’t born until a few years later, so you weren’t able to witness this change yourself. How difficult was it to recreate the atmosphere of the time?
It wasn’t that easy. But it never is when you create a world in a movie. For example, if you are telling a story that takes place in 2005, you cannot show cars that were made afterwards. But you’ll achieve a lot if you use the backdrops that you saw in the old Warner or Paramount films. If you then put the right cars in front of it and choose the right costumes, you’ve already achieved a lot.
Why does the film actually have the title Sylvie’s love? Usually love is a feeling that affects two people. So why only mention them in the title?
Because for me the film is about how Sylvie has the choice of what she wants to make part of her life. Her mother tries to make her the perfect housewife I was talking about earlier. A woman for whom it is also predetermined who and what to love. As she grows older and grown up, she develops the sovereignty to decide for herself.
In the film, this decision also means choosing between two men: Robert and her fiancé. It is always implied that Robert is the right one, that there is a right and a wrong love. But how do you know if love is the right one if you haven’t lived it?
Ultimately, it’s up to you to find out for yourself. And that also means questioning a lot of what is given to you. The fiancé was more or less chosen for her. But love should be more than that. If you don’t absolutely love someone, why be with them? For this you also have to become aware of what is important to you and what is important in life.
Could you tell us something about the casting process? In a love story in particular, it is important to find the right actors and actresses.
In any case. The most important thing for me was that the chemistry between them should be right. My goal was to recreate the chemistry of past American lovers: Robert Redford and Barbra Streisand, Billy Dee Williams and Diana Ross, Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart. When shooting, I started with the scenes where Sylvie and Robert get to know each other. The more intimate scenes came later, so that a chemistry between Tessa Thompson and Nnamdi Asomugha could develop in an organic way.
You had planned the film for a long time, for a few years. What took so long
The greatest difficulty was getting the money for the film together. Otherwise I would have shot it much earlier. But I didn’t just wait during this time. Rather, I used the time to work continuously on the script and make it better. The dialogues should be perfect and not just good.
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