A writer in New York trying to define his love of the city while also navigating his own love life? Oh yeah, the romance is back alright. André Holland produces and stars in Love, Brooklyn, the debut feature from director Rachael Abigail Holder. The trailer for the film, which will enjoy a limited opening on August 29 before hitting theaters nationwide September 5, is suffused with warmth while hitting those classic romantic beats—the impatient editor looking for the writer’s next great work, the patient best friend offering words of wisdom, and two beautiful women offering two different versions of love.
Love, Brooklyn follows Holland as he “navigates complicated relationships with his ex, an art gallery owner (Nicole Beharie), and his current lover, a newly-single mother (DeWanda Wise), with the support of his best friend (Roy Wood Jr.),” according to the film’s synopsis. Speaking with IndieWire, Holder said the script, written by Paul Zimmerman, wasn’t initially written with Black actors in mind. The characters’ “culture wasn’t defined, so I could fill in the paint in that way,” she said. “A script originally written for white characters needed a culture to be infused into to it, so it wasn’t really a challenge, it was an exciting venture to choose what that culture would be. We didn’t just want the characters to be Black period. Blackness is a wide scope of people, and I wanted them to be specific.”
The movie initially premiered at Sundance, where The A.V. Club‘s Jacob Oller observed that “Beharie and Wise are excellent at carving out small details of a dynamic that’s more complex that it seems on the surface, but in a larger narrative sense, everyone’s making the most out of a thin script.” He added, “It ends up like every other three-person romantic dramedy ends up, but at least Love, Brooklyn boasts competent players going through its motions.”
