LACKLUSTRE LOVE ACROSS THE GENERATIONS

THIS tale of parallel love affairs unfurls lazily to a jazz-brunch soundtrack, as picture-perfect New Yorkers Mae (Issa Rae) and Michael (Lakeith Stanfield) are drawn together by a connection that goes deep into the Louisiana past.

Mae’s mother, Christina, a Manhattan photographer, has died, leaving two mysterious letters and a case of doubtful paternity for her child to investigate.

Michael is a magazine writer, and comes across a photograph of the young Christina (Chante Adams) as he interviews a man in Louisiana.

You can almost hear the ‘ker-ching!’ as the plot clicks simplistically into place. Will the lovers make the same mistakes as the previous generation?

Director and writer Stella Meghie teases out the flirtation, almost to the point of exasperation, and laces it with flashbacks. Christina’s story, as a working-class African-American trying to make it in the New York artistic elite, is left irritatingly unexplained. She takes the traditional Greyhound bus to freedom, and then we see her with a young daughter in a photography studio. We need some grit in the mix.

Instead, we float around in a romantic haze with Michael and Mae (left), as they follow Christina’s footsteps into cool jazz bars, hang out in trendy loft spaces and debate the virtues of musicians Drake and Kendrick Lamar in candlelit restaurants. Mae is pro-Drake: ‘He’s in tune with his feelings, my feelings, your feelings,’ she says, as the film slides further into glossy, cliched territory.