Critic Reviews
74
Metascore
Generally Favorable
positive
19(76%)
mixed
6(24%)
negative
0(0%)
Showing 25 Critic Reviews
Dec 23, 2020
100
Sweeping and flawlessly produced, Ashe’s epic works as an inherently refreshing entry in the canon of a genre designed to make us sigh with knowing elation or tear up in misery thinking about our own bygone rendezvous.
Dec 23, 2020
100
Sylvie’s Love feels downright rebellious, daring to exist with its unapologetic old-fashioned quality at a time when many maddeningly seem to dismiss honest-to-god romances and proud women’s pictures as slight and outdated.
Dec 30, 2020
100
Sylvie’s Love is heartbreaking and heart melting in almost equal measure, a film about professional disappointment and the importance of timing as much as it’s about love. I haven’t been so emotionally wrecked sitting alone at a festival movie since Brooklyn. Sylvie’s Love is damn near perfect
Dec 23, 2020
90
Ashe is using a familiar, long-derided film genre both affectionately and critically to explore the gleaming surfaces of life as well as the anguish that lies beneath.
Dec 30, 2020
90
The film’s styles, tones, and moods are as distinctive as its approach to jazz.
Dec 22, 2020
88
Like the great Douglas Sirk melodramas of that time period, Sylvie’s Love is unabashedly sentimental and just gorgeous to behold — but the difference here is the terrific ensemble cast is primarily Black and Latinx.
Oct 12, 2020
80
It’s a film that both looks and feels the part, a handsomely made love story that’s easy to fall in love with.
Dec 22, 2020
80
Between the scorching chemistry of leads Tessa Thompson and Nnamdi Asomugha and the glorious mid-century outfits, hair, décor and cars on display, Sylvie’s Love is a delectable valentine.
Dec 30, 2020
80
Combining beautiful aesthetics with winning performances from Thompson and Asomugha, Sylvie’s Love is the rare Black period drama that tells a sweet and satisfying love story without revolving around the racial adversity of the era.
Jan 3, 2021
80
Like Barry Jenkins’s If Beale Street Could Talk and Todd Haynes’s Carol, Ashe takes the form of the 50s melodrama and recentres it on characters the genre has tended to ignore. This isn’t as politically restless as those films – it’s less interested in subverting the “woman’s picture” than establishing itself as one.
