Ask ten New Yorkers about dating and you will hear ten stories you will not forget. A friend of a friend who laughed through a first date because she was too nervous. A sweet week that ended with a message that never came. The strange dinner where both people realized they were trying on versions of themselves that did not fit. This city loves a meet cute and it loves chaos, and for most of us the two come wrapped together. There is a joke that if you want a second date you had better book it before you order the check. It is not always wrong.
Rachael Abigail Holder steps right into that maze with her first feature, Love, Brooklyn. It is a romance, yes, but it is not a neatly labeled one. The film follows three people who circle one another with longing and fear and kindness. At the center is Roger, played with soft confidence by André Holland. He is a novelist who wants to capture the mood of his borough as it changes around him. He is looking for words. He is also looking for company. He keeps meeting up with an ex named Casey, a sharp gallery owner played by Nicole Beharie. At the same time he has started seeing Nicole, a massage therapist portrayed by DeWanda Wise, who is raising a young daughter after losing her husband. The plan, at least in their careful language, is to keep everything simple. They tell themselves they are just having fun. Nobody say the word future aloud. Until of course someone does. Because that is how these stories go. The moment you think you have kept your feelings in a tidy drawer, they spill across the floor.
Holder’s affection for the borough spreads over the movie like late afternoon light. The cinematographer, Martim Vian, gives the streets and bars and parks a glow that tells you someone is watching with love. Dates unfold in small rooms that feel warm and lived in, the kind of places where candles make everyone look like a better version of themselves. There is the small thrill of walking past brownstones and thinking about who might be behind those front doors. There are those looping paths in Prospect Park where time seems to slow down when you walk hand in hand. The camera is not rushing to the next moment. It lingers the way a good conversation lingers, finding corners and quiet spaces most films overlook. Every neighborhood looks like it carries an old story and a new one.
The film is also honest about how the city is never one thing. If you have lived here for any length of time you have your own before and after. Before the pandemic and after. Before that favorite bar closed and after. Before your block felt like it belonged to people you knew and after the rent hikes and construction fences and coffee shops with different prices. Holder and co writer Paul Zimmerman do not pretend those shifts are happening somewhere off screen. They bring them right to the characters. Casey’s gallery is in the crosshairs of buyers you never meet, the kind who make decisions in rooms you never see. She knows she is standing on ground someone else wants. The film recognizes the displacement of Black communities and the complicated feelings that come with it. In that way it echoes The Last Black Man in San Francisco. Both works carry love for their cities and grief for what gets pushed aside. Love, Brooklyn does not settle the debate. It does not try to. The uneasy peace it reaches may leave you unsatisfied for at least one person in the story, and maybe that is the point. Some situations do not resolve into a warm lesson. They just keep moving.
What makes the triangle compelling is how different the attachments feel. It is not simply one man choosing between two women, or two women competing for a finish line where a ring waits. The film is more thoughtful than that. Roger and Casey hold onto each other through the comfort of shared history. They fall into old rhythms with ease. The joke they both know by heart. The restaurant where the staff waves hello. The way he reaches for her wrist when he is making a point and the way she lets him. They do not talk about what comes next. The predictability itself becomes a cushion and a trap.
With Nicole, everything shifts. She carries the weight of real loss and the responsibility of a daughter who is old enough to notice who is around. When Roger steps into that space he cannot pretend he is just passing through. It is not the kind of situation where you disappear when things get complicated. A child does not let you stay in the shallow end. So their time together comes with larger questions. It is something like the difference between dating when you are in your twenties and when you have lived enough to collect scars. In one, you jump because you want to feel wind in your hair. In the other, you look down and ask if you have a net.
Zimmerman’s script has a measured pace that gives space to glances and pauses and half smiles. You can feel the silences working. At times the film ties up a beat with a neat bow. One scene ends with a gag that is almost too tidy. Roger manages to anger both women on the same night. He steps outside and finds someone has taken the front wheel from his bike. It is a literal roadblock as he tries to ride between two lives. A bit on the nose. You might groan. On the other hand, dating in this city has a way of turning into a New Yorker cartoon when you least expect it, so the moment lands with a rueful laugh.
The acting does the heavy lifting. Holland gives Roger a blend of charm and uncertainty that looks effortless. He knows how to listen, which is harder to play than most people think. He also knows how to look lost without appearing weak. In one conversation you see him calculating what words will keep the night easy. In the next you watch him feel the weight of what he is promising with a hug he did not plan to give. He is a man who talks about his book as if it were a mirror and does not realize that the mirror is looking back at him.
Beharie’s Casey brings steel and ache. The ground under her business is shifting and you can see her trying to plant her feet. There is a scene where she explains something about a piece of art to a client and you notice the patience in her voice is also a shield. When she is with Roger she slides into a well worn groove, but you can feel the thrum of dissatisfaction under it. She likes the jokes and the rituals and the way he knows her order. She also knows this is not a life you can live forever. She would prefer not to admit that out loud. Beharie lets that contradiction sit in her eyes.
Wise’s Nicole holds herself with the quiet power of someone who has already faced the worst day and kept going. Her grief is not played for melodrama. It is a fact she carries, like a ring you no longer wear but still keep in a drawer. She cares for her daughter with steady assurance and allows parts of herself to wake up again in Roger’s company. There is warmth in their scenes together that feels patient rather than sparking. She makes it clear without speeches that if he wants to be present he must actually be present. The role could have been a saint or a symbol. Wise makes her human.
The city around them is not just a backdrop. It feels alive in the film, a companion to the characters. The bars are dim and inviting. The storefronts look like they have been there forever even when you know they arrived last month. You can almost smell the pizza on the block and the damp morning scent of the park. The camera pays attention to small details that summarize a borough better than a montage could. A bike locked to a sign. A leash looped around a bench while someone talks and forgets the time. A couple leaning on a stoop choosing the next place to wander. These images remind you that romance does not need grand gestures. It needs a sense of time and place. It needs to feel lived in.
Love, Brooklyn has tenderness at its core. It is a love letter and a sympathy card at the same time. It says I adore you and also I am sorry for what you had to lose to become what you are. Growing up, in life and in love, often means noticing the gap between what we wanted and what we can carry. The film suggests that caring about someone sometimes requires letting them go and wishing them well in a life that does not include your hand on their back. That idea hurts in the way honest things do. The characters here are not villains. No one is twisting a mustache. They are people who are trying to do right and getting it wrong and then trying again.
If you have been single in this city, even for a short stretch, you may recognize your own choices in the film. The way you kept seeing an ex because you knew the way their kitchen felt at midnight. The way you stepped into a new relationship even though the shape of it scared you in a good way. The way you wanted to be two people at once because both possibilities felt true. Roger thinks he can be in both worlds without becoming dishonest. He is not duplicitous. He is hopeful. It is a subtle difference that still leaves marks.
The writing is careful enough to avoid easy declarations. There is no speech that sums up everything in a tidy thesis. Instead we get moments that reveal character. A brief argument that starts over something small and becomes a window. A joke that stumbles and tells the truth anyway. An evening that ends too abruptly. A morning that lasts longer than either person planned because the conversation turns light and they both forget to be guarded. Holder gives the actors room to breathe inside these beats. You can see the choices on their faces without anyone circling them in red ink.
There is also a clear lineage in the film’s depiction of changing neighborhoods and the Black artists who make a home there. By nodding to The Last Black Man in San Francisco, the film situates itself in a conversation about art and place and who is allowed to belong. The camera’s affection is not blind. It sees the glossy new coffee shop and the shuttered storefront it replaced. It lets us sit with the discomfort. At times the script reaches for a way to live with the loss rather than resisting it. Some viewers will wish for more fight, especially when it comes to what happens to Casey. The choice to make a truce with the future may sting. The sting has a ring of truth. Not every story ends with a rally. Sometimes you sign a lease and hope you can keep it. Sometimes you cannot.
The film’s structure mirrors the ebb and flow of dating. It does not build to a single grand scene followed by a neat bow. It arrives at turning points like a tide. A quiet sequence leads to a change you only recognize after it has passed. Then the story pulls back and gives everyone space to reflect. There is an old movie learning in that approach, where the romance depends on small shifts rather than speeches at airports. Yet the setting and the language are entirely here and now.
I would be remiss not to mention how good the film looks. Vian makes the borough feel like an old friend in a new coat. The colors are warm without feeling sweet. Nights glow but do not smother the frame. Daytime has the look of a brisk walk that wakes you up. The compositions are attentive but never fussy. You feel the specificity of each room and sidewalk. That attention becomes a quiet argument all by itself. It says this place matters. These lives matter. Pay attention.
What I appreciated most is that the film trusts us. It assumes we can sit with contradictions. It assumes we know what it is like to wake up unsure of a choice you made and then spend a day defending it to yourself. It assumes we can look at a man who wants to be good and still causes harm and not reduce him to a type. It even assumes we can watch a character accept a future that feels unfair and talk about why it feels that way after the credits. That kind of trust is rare.
There are moments when the writing feels too tidy, as noted, and a small handful of beats where you can feel the gears of the plot turn. Those moments are outweighed by the number of times the film leans into ambiguity and lets the performances steer. The central trio is well matched. The chemistry has different textures in the two relationships and the film allows that difference to stand without judging. Roger and Casey feel like an old song you can sing without thinking. Roger and Nicole feel like a new melody that demands attention. Neither gets crowned as right or wrong. They simply require different versions of the same man.
In the end, Love, Brooklyn leaves you with the ache of a goodbye you understood but did not want. It also leaves you with a sense of gratitude for the evenings that land just right. For the laughter that rolls out of you when you did not think you had any left. For the rare days when this city that can make you feel invisible also makes you feel seen. That is the contradiction that keeps people here. That is also the contradiction that keeps people circling romantic possibilities even when the odds are not in their favor. A crowded train where nobody makes eye contact and yet someone offers a seat to a tired parent at the last second. A bar where your friend shows up late and it does not matter because once they arrive you forget you were angry.
Holder’s debut wears its heart on its sleeve without turning sentimental. It allows love to be generous and cautious at the same time. It allows a neighborhood to be a home and a machine that pushes people out. It allows grief to live next to desire without apology. When the film ends you may not have a clear answer about who belongs with whom or what the right choice ever was. You will have the echo of scenes you recognize in your own life, and that might be enough. For now, anyway.
We are all learning to live with change. We are all learning to care for each other without holding too tight. Some nights that lesson feels like loss. Some nights it feels like a gift. This film finds beauty in that lesson. It asks us to look closely at the people in front of us, to forgive them when they fail, and to be honest about what we can promise. If that sounds simple, it is not. If it sounds small, that is only because we forget how large a small kindness can feel.
Maybe the closest thing to a thesis in Love, Brooklyn is this. It is very easy to feel alone in a crowded place. Plenty of people do every day. What saves us, as often as not, are the brief moments when we meet someone halfway. A hand on a table. A smile that softens a stubborn mood. A walk through the park where the conversation meanders and you realize you would like to have another one just like it. The film is made out of those moments. It tells us they matter. It looks at this borough with clear eyes and a full heart and says, even after everything, there is still room to fall for each other here.
