DailyView: Day 280, Movie 395

Today we are blending together the rom-coms with Black History Month and we get The Photograph, a 2020 film that I missed in the theaters because of the pandemic.

The Photograph told two intermixed stories from two different time frames. Famous photographer Christina Eames died unexpectedly, leaving her estranged daughter Mae (Issa Rae) filled with questions. When Mae discovered a photograph, it lead to an investigation into her mother’s past life and her love, Isaac (Y’lan Noel). As she was looking into the mystery, she entered a relationship with a journalist, Michael Block (LaKeith Stanfield).

LaKeith Stanfield and Issa Rae were wonderful in this film, showing an undeniable amount of chemistry between them. Both are exceptionally strong, up and coming actors that have huge futures ahead of them. This showed that they are capable of tapping into the romantic side of their repertoire. Because of them, the present day story was much more compelling that the story of the past, which felt fairly typical.

Some of the film was set in New Orleans and that backdrop added to the flare of The Photograph.

There are a strong cast of black actors in this ensemble including Courtney B. Vance, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Teyonah Parris, Milton “Lil Rel” Howery Jr., Rob Morgan (Turk from Daredevil), Chanté Adams, and Jasmine Cephas Jones. The cast also included Chelsea Peretti.

The Photograph was fine. The performances of the main two stars carried it through a fairly predictable story.