The photograph
2020
Director: Stella Meghie
Starring: Issa Rae, LaKeith Stanfield, Chelsea Paretti, Teyonnah Paris, Rob Morgan, Lil rel Howery, Y, lan Noel, Chante Adams etc
Overall rating 66/100
The photograph is based on two intertwining and connected love stories. Mostly situated between Michael (Lakeith Stanfield) an aspiring photographer and journalist interviews a man about his wife who recently passed away, this happened to be the mother of Mae (Issa Rae), so due to him not realising the connections Michael interviews Mae about her mum, but they both start falling for each other, but as we grow to learn that not all relationships are meant to be. The photograph was pretty good, but sadly for me slowly fell apart as the film went on, lets talk about this more in detail.
First of all, the film had lovely cinematography and sound design and also likeable secondary characters. The film was beautiful to look at, it had fantastic set pieces and beautiful scenery that was explored well with both of the main characters going through just simple walks that really made you appreciate the scenery around them. The sound design was also great, the use of music to convey a sensual mood and tone was used very effectively and made you connect to those particular scenes a lot more. The secondary characters also complimented the main characters very well. Especially Lil rel Howery who bought some much needed humour to the film.
However, my first two negatives would be the films rushed beginning and safe tone. I would of liked for their to have been more character depth with Issa Rae's character instead of her just being thrown into the mix, it made her feel less important to her male counterpart which should not of been the case, so I would of changed this slightly so both characters had an equal amount of time and depth to them. Next the film just was very safe. The film for the most part was not particular romantic and when it was it felt very tame, and the drama was very simplistic and never felt impactful enough, so sadly the whole film lacked any form of surprises and never went all the way with its plot points.
My next positives would be the films interesting themes on love. The dual narratives and the character depth. The film went into some interesting themes when Michael and Mae were going on their dates. They mentioned that people can't be themselves on first dates and change their personality based on who they are around. I thought this was really interesting and very true in terms of society today. I did also like the films dual narratives with 4 different characters. I felt like they added an equal amount of depth and time to both love stories, as you could equally connect with both characters, so I thought this was well done and to have them as adults as well was clever and how all their stories linked together was good. This also led to a good amount of character depth, Due to them spending so much time with all four characters you got to understand them as people a lot more so this was appreciated.
My final two positives would the good performances from LaKeith Stanfield and Issa Rae and the chemistry they had with each other. LaKeith managed to pull of a very charming and likeable performance hear, and you genuinely believed when watching that Michael was willing to drop everything for Mae. But the real star for me was Issa Rae. I really like Issa and this film further cemented that. She had a natural charm here that made her instantly likeable, and she had great chemistry with whatever people she was put with. Both actors also had fantastic chemistry between them. So their developing relationship was believable occasionally romantic and very relatable with their back and forth dialogue.
However, my final two negatives that sadly bought the film down to more mediocrity would be my lack of connection to its drama and emotion and the conflicting narratives at the end. I just didn't connect with this film emotionally at all. The drama was limited, felt safe and very by the books and predictable and there were some scenes that were supposed to be emotional, but I didn't connect to them at all which was a shame. The ending for me was just messy with the dual narratives, they should of went for a linear narrative or Mae's character staying with Michael. But no, they didn't get have a similar ending to her, as they didn't get together and they had the man leaving instead, I just throught it was poorly put together and sadly really affected the movies image and quality.
Overall, the photograph was held together by its soundtrack chemistry between actors, the fantastic lead performance from Issa Rae and its character depth. But sadly falls apart with its lack of effort with its narrative, and it overall feeling very safe and emotionally dull.
