All Pro cornerback-turned-free agent bust-turned-acclaimed actor is quite the career arc. Less challenging for Nnamdi Asomugha? Falling in love with Tessa Thompson.
In Sylvie’s Love, the former-Raiders and Eagles CB, who was once the highest-paid defensive back in NFL history, plays Robert, a saxophonist who finds work at a record store where he mets Sylvie (Tessa Thompson). Romance quickly blossoms between the two, but they go their separate ways — she becomes a television producer; he grapples with the waning popularity of jazz — until reconnecting years later, feelings still intact.
It’s a “damn near perfect” film. Here’s the official plot synopsis:
Robert spends late nights playing behind a less-talented but well-known bandleader, as member of a jazz quartet. Sylvie, who dreams of a career in television, spends her summer days helping around her father’s record store, as she waits for her fiancé to return from war. When Robert takes a part-time job at the record store, the two begin a friendship that sparks a deep passion in each of them unlike anything they have felt before. As the summer winds down, life takes them in different directions, bringing their relationship to an end. Years pass, Sylvie’s career as a TV producer blossoms, while Robert has to come to terms with what the age of Motown is doing to the popularity of Jazz. In a chance meeting, Sylvie and Robert cross paths again, only to find that while their lives have changed, their feelings for each other remain the same.
Written and directed by Eugene Ashe, Sylvie’s Love arrives on Amazon Prime Video on December 25.
