If you search visual images representing the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, you’ll find a theme of orange hellfire raining upon the dark earthly grounds ceding to such punishment. It’s explosive, it’s violent — exactly the kind of Biblical takedown against sin that I’d imagine it to look like. If you also took a look at American painter Henry Ossawa Tanner’s 1920 painting of the same name, you would not have guessed that it shares the same inspiration as the imaginative paintings. Something is certainly burning, but the lighter neutrals almost give into a stillness of such action, like the recognition of reckoning within our destinies, and all we can do is watch it happen.
It is this painting that sparks a talking point between two Brooklynites, Roger (Andre Holland) and Casey (Nicole Beharie), as they peruse through an art gallery. It is the only piece of art that makes it into conversation in Rachael Holder’s film Love, Brooklyn, which at first seems to be about the loss of culture and history as gentrification charges forward. Taking in the subject and Tanner, who permanently leaves America to live in France, the comparison of the painting and the film seem pointed.
Alas, the film is called Love, Brooklyn, more as a love-letter signature to the borough and less of a devastating depiction of a dying place. However, the film practically cements gentrification (a slow-burn sort of violence, to be honest) as a natural degradation of society — well, natural in consequence to the societal concept and promotion of capitalism, though you wouldn’t catch big suits pillaging the screen. The changing landscape becomes a quiet suffocation for Roger, who is expected to complete a writing assignment about Brooklyn’s current status and Casey, who faces pressure from financial interests seeking after her grandmother’s art gallery. Not only are their individual lives challenged: we meet Roger and Casey at the embarking of a post-breakup friendship. Though it’s not initially revealed why they decide to separate, attachment styles and flirtatious communication linger in the air to make it feel like there is more to hold onto.
Roger is also in a situationship with Nicole (DeWanda Wise), a single mother who’s studying in healthcare. While initially content with keeping their lives separate, the dynamic is stirred when Nicole’s daughter Ally wants to spend time with Roger. Complicated by the death of Nicole’s husband and Ally’s father, Roger learns that growing up doesn’t happen in the future. It’s happening now.
As a story about three people unknowingly coming to a fork in their lives, the film doesn’t move with much vigor. Like the characters, Love, Brooklyn walks at the pace of a visitor looking intently at paintings at a museum. Each scene feels like it should be taken in wholly by the character’s pose, the set design, and the lighting: the romantic seating proximities at a bar, the stylistic coziness of someone’s bedroom, even the public park where the grassy hill meets the bright blue sky, indicating a land outside of rent raises and noise pollution.
In watching the traversion across the neighborhood, I’m reminded of 2023’s Rye Lane, a heavenly treat that wants you to fall in love with South London as much as you fall in love with the rom-com journey between two people. Love, Brooklyn sorta gets there, but it feels like it contends with the troubles of gentrification as much as the idea of wanting to believe that the characters have good taste and enough money to not have roommates. And that’s true a lot of the time. I find myself eying a wall poster or Roger’s simple but tasteful wardrobe. Though the characters don’t spend time complaining, there’s a disparity between the characters’ despondences about what’s expected of them and going to really nice coffee shops.
True, anyone — the gentrified, the gentrifier — can enjoy nice coffee! And it’s nice to watch Holland, a man who knows how to equip expressions, act without pretension with Beharie and Wise. I just wish that the film chose an opinion to get behind. A.V. Rockwell’s excellent A Thousand and One feels as trapped as the story intends to, while managing to keep the momentum going. Love, Brooklyn’s mission of being stuck in one place affecting our livelihood and relationships is there, but the crossfires of a rather uninteresting relationship make it hard to root for them. Add more characters! Make it more lively. Don’t let Roger bike in the middle of the street when the camera makes a point that there’s a dedicated bike lane right there. As a Bostonian, I’m willing to love Brooklyn, but can we love it like this?
Love, Brooklyn
2025
dir. Rachael Holder
97 min.
Opens Friday, 9/5 @ Kendall Square Cinema and AMC Boston Common
