An unusual story of depth, “Love, Brooklyn,” delivers more than one would expect of a film exploring a triangle. Roger, a writer, is embarking on a new, complicated relationship with Nicole, the recently widowed mother of a young girl, while trying to maintain a friendship with his ex, Casey, a gallery owner who sends him mixed signals. Love triangles are not new but this one seems fresher than most because the framework is gentrification of the part of Brooklyn they all know and cherish. The real question that director Rachel Abigail Holder asks is whether one can move on while still maintaining a link to the past. This, in essence, is the root of all gentrification issues, whether it’s Brooklyn, the Bronx, East L.A. or Hollywood. Can you keep the memory of the old when all you see is the new? What role does emotion play in this question?
Roger’s latest assignment, one whose deadline is looming, is an assessment of what is happening in Brooklyn as new, trendy businesses move in and buildings are knocked down displacing the old. Roger’s heart lies with the past. Casey is the perfect embodiment of that past. She inherited the building in which her art gallery is located. She represents talented, young, primarily Black artists who are under the radar and she’s had a fair amount of luck selling their work. She considers herself a last outpost as the buildings and businesses change around her. An art gallery seems to be a white elephant in this morphing neighborhood. Her property, well located, has attracted many offers, all of which, up until now, she has resisted. Roger was her sounding board. But in life as in love, she can’t seem to give him up entirely, much like her dream of staying in her gallery as life moves swiftly away from her. Casey’s desire to stay in the neighborhood and inure herself to the generous offers being made is at the heart of Roger’s feelings on gentrification. As inevitable as it seems, somehow there should be a way to hold on to the past, the history that may be left behind.
Roger’s new love, Nicole, is complicated. Nicole and her daughter have become an island, isolated from the world following the death of Nicole’s husband—not ready to move on and yet very attracted to Roger. He understands her plight but is feeling the need to push their relationship to the next step; Nicole, not so much.
Holder has a real love for this part of New York. Roger rides his bike everywhere, giving you an eyeful of the Brooklyn that has been revived and a view of the shop-worn streets that have yet to bloom again. Is urban gentrification all bad or are there ways to integrate it into the past? Can Roger keep the intellectual relationship with Casey and find a way to gently bring Nicole into his aura and blossom it into love?
Roger, Nicole and Casey have a lot of depth to explore and integrate. Roger may turn out to be collateral damage to each woman’s specific needs, and then, maybe not. Roger is much like the article he’s writing. How do you gently push away the old while subtly reeling in the new?
The characters in Paul Zimmerman’s lovely script were originally conceived as White. Holder had a different narrative that she wanted to tell by doing it through the eyes of Black characters living in an essentially all Black world, making the story deeper on several levels. This could be about any three people because most relationship issues are universal. By making the characters Black, she has introduced race, not as an antagonistic force but as one that deepens the issues. Where will they go after losing their neighborhood? They aren’t just losing businesses or homes but a sense of community, a community for African Americans that is harder to establish in the majority White or Hispanic parts of town that may be open to them but have their own tangled roots of identity. Hanging unspoken over the gentrification of this neighborhood is the fact that it was already a gentrified neighborhood, just one that was originally Black and poor and is now Black and upwardly mobile; one that is now going to lose that Black identity. It is up to Roger to try to mesh what he sees with what he feels into his relationships with both women. In some ways, his magazine assignment on gentrification mirrors his personal experience.
The film’s pacing is, at times, a bit glacial but it’s all in the service of character development. Roger, much like a Greek chorus, is our narrator, but we are called on to incorporate him and his views into our feelings for the other characters. No one is easy and no one is a stereotype. Their race is incidental; they could be you or me. Holder has given us many rooting interests and allows us to make up our minds whether anyone is right or wrong. Actually, no one is right and no one is wrong. Cinematographer Martim Vian has filmed Holder’s Brooklyn affectionately, giving the viewer a close look at what the characters may be giving up, never to be replaced.
The actors are extraordinary, never descending to cliché. Nicole Beharie brings an edge to the character of Casey. Her ambivalence toward all things in her life is transmitted as blasé but she is anything but. She is the challenging intellectual center of the film. DeWanda Wise as Nicole displays a different kind of ambivalence. Outwardly she wants to move forward but the fear of not honoring the past is holding her back. She is a rooting interest.
André Holland as Roger was what made me want to see this Indie in the first place. He always brings a depth and empathy to the characters he plays, sometimes even beyond what’s on the page. He does that here. Ostensibly all the problems presented are for him to solve but that would be a simplistic view. The character of Roger, as embodied by the soft spoken, empathetic Holland is an everyman. He is you, he is them, he is him. Holland, like the film, is everything, everywhere all at once.
This is a lovely, small film that will engage you. There’s no violence, not much action, a bit of comic relief in the guise of Roy Wood Jr. playing a henpecked husband, but lots of soul.
Opening September 5 at the Laemmle Royal.
