The Photograph review – intoxicating romance needs less plot

“What did you think about the movie?” asks Mae (Issa Rae), a New York curator, to Mike (Lakeith Stanfeld), a reporter writing a story on her famous – and recently deceased – photographer mother. “To be honest,” he replies, “I was a little distracted.” Watching Stella Meghie’s The Photograph, a slight romantic drama that thrives on the chemistry of its leading duo but is let down by an incessant desire to tell two stories at the same time, you’re bound to relate.

The Photograph is a strange little film, though perhaps not intentionally so. It seems a bit out of time, halfway caught between that of a conventional rom-com and something with aspirations of the arthouse. The biggest problem is that Meghie has made the mistake of thinking her movie is all about its plot, seemingly unaware that she already has everything she needs in the film’s intoxicating mood and its captivating central couple.

Stanfield, incapable of a bad performance (even when he’s as sleepy as he is here), almost seems poised as a subversion of the sort of character you’d usually find facing the 90s-esque romance movie conventions this film sets up. Nonchalant to the point of lethargy, it isn’t long before he’s won over – and so are we – by Rae’s enigmatic Mae after the pair meet to discuss the origins of a mysterious photograph left behind by her mother. She lights up the screen with her determined and charming disposition and gets his blood racing. We want these two to get together the moment they first meet, which goes a long way in endearing us towards the film’s otherwise familiar beats.

As The Photograph slathers a seemingly endless amount of jazz and R&B on the soundtrack (there is rarely a scene here without music playing over the top), it’s a film that’s at its best when it drops the plot and simply lets its stars hang out in low-lit bars and cosy apartments, sipping drinks, rain splashing against the windows, Al Green playing on the turntable. Later, during a trip to New Orleans, words aren’t even necessary: the film sizzles whenever Mike and Mae are sat across from one another, camera lingering on their sultry glances. It’s all in the eyes.

Less successful are flashbacks to the story of Mae’s mother, Christina (Chanté Adams), who grows up in New Orleans and moves to New York to make something of herself, dooming a potential romance. The idea is that there is a synchronicity in the story of mother and daughter, in Mae’s quest to avoid repeating the same mistakes as the woman who raised her. But there is a TV movie blandness to these flashbacks. Whenever the story cuts to the past, you’re simply waiting to get back to a bar, to hang with Mike and Mae in the present. Still, this is a surprisingly compelling watch, and one that suggests Meghie might have a great film in her somewhere down the line.