Less than half a century ago, anti-miscegenation laws still stood in over a dozen states in the Southern U.S., criminalizing interracial marriage between whites and nonwhites. Loving v. Virginia wasn’t the first federal challenge to the law, but it became the definitive example when in 1967 the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Mildred Loving, a black woman, and her husband Richard Loving, affirming their marital rights as a couple—and striking down the law in all states.
The story of the history-making couple is making its way to the big screen in the form of Loving, and the first trailer has arrived, starring Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga (perhaps best known to U.S. audiences as Raina in Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.). It opens with Richard promising to build Mildred a house—“our house”—and follows them as they travel to Washington, D.C., to get married before returning to their home state. They’re met, of course, with animosity and eventually jailed but decide to fight with attorney (and future Virgina House member) Bernie Cohen (Nick Kroll) as their advocate. Jeff Nichols (Mud, Midnight Special) wrote and directed.
Not unlike Nate Parker’s The Birth of a Nation at Sundance earlier this year, Loving emerged from the Cannes Film Festival in May as a very likely awards season front-runner (and counter to this year’s #OscarsSoWhite) based on early chatter. Reviews so far have been stellar—it currently sits at a 91-percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. And while the trailer makes the story seem a bit heavy-handed with the “forbidden love” trope, critics like Time’s Stephanie Zacharek have praised the film for being more understated in its storytelling than it could be. (It feels “immediate and modern, and not just like a history lesson,” she writes.) Negga especially has been singled out for her performance, which we’ll all have a chance to see when the movie arrives in theaters Nov. 4.
