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This year’s Sundance Film Festival hit Southside With You has all the hallmarks of a great date movie that is, if you’re interested in one of the most important first dates in modern American history. Southside dares to drop in on the early romance of a young Barack Obama and Michelle Robinson as they wander Chicago during one hot summer day in 1989.
As the first trailer above reveals, the charming, modest drama from first time writer-director Richard Tanne has more in common with the walk-’n’-talk romance Before Sunrise than with any political biopic.
We meet Michelle (Tika Sumpter), a successful young lawyer who’s getting ready to go to a community meeting with her firm’s new summer associate. The outing is firmly not a date, as she keeps telling her skeptical parents. (“Barack O’what?” her father asks when he hears her potential suitor’s name.)
This version of Barack (Parker Sawyers) still smokes, drives a rusting Datsun, and has a thing for Janet Jackson.
He’s also doing all that he can to persuade the reluctant Miss Robinson to spend the day with him. Will he succeed? Spoiler alert: yes. But it’s still a campaign worth watching. Southside With You hits theaters in August.