The first trailer for Southside With You, Richard Tanne’s film about Barack and Michelle Obama’s first date, has arrived, and it looks charming as all get out. The Obamas have told the story of their first date before, from their visit to the Art Institute of Chicago (“Art—guys out there—it impresses people,”) to a screening of Do the Right Thing, but there’s nothing about the story that makes it seem natural for a film adaptation. (The Obamas are reportedly baffled the film exists.)
But Richard Tanne used the bare bones of their date as the framework for what looks like a Richard Linklater–style romance, fleshing it out with details both real (Barack really did drive a yellow Datsun with a rusted-out floor) and imagined (the Chicago Cultural Center stands in for the Art Institute; Ernie Barnes’ “Sugar Shack” stands in for, presumably, “Gift, Bequest and Purchase: A Selection of Textile Acquisitions from 1982–1987”). And the trailer does a good job conveying the warmth that won over critics at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Parker Sawyers and Tika Sumpter as Barack and Michelle have good chemistry and don’t seem to have fallen too far down the impersonation rabbit hole. The real test may be how much Tanne indulges the impulse to drop hints about the couple’s future—the trailer has Barack allowing he is “maybe” interested in politics, which seems ominous—but if Southside With You stays focused on the summer of 1989 instead of the grand sweep of history, then I’ll be all in. The film hits theaters just in time for the twilight of the Obama presidency in August.
