Tanne’s extraordinary actors thread that strait nimbly, delivering performances that exist on their own but feel true to the characters, that spin with dialectical delight and embody the ardors, ambitions, and uncertainties that even the most able and aware young adults must face. Movies about public figures-ones whose appearance, diction, and gestures are deeply ingrained in the minds of most likely viewers-must confront the Scylla of impersonation and the Charybdis of unfaithfulness. The film exudes Tanne’s own sense of calm excitement, nearly a documentarian’s serendipitous thrill at being present to catch on-camera a secret miracle of mighty historical import. The dialogue is freewheeling and intimate, ranging through subjects far from the matters at hand, suggesting enormous intellect and enormous promise without seeming cut-and-pasted from speeches or memoirs. In between, Tanne pulls off a near-miracle, conveying these historic figures’ depth and complexity of character without making them grandiose. Tanne tells the story of the First Couple’s first date with a tightly constrained time frame-one day’s and evening’s worth of action-that begins with the protagonists preparing for their rendezvous and ends with them back at their homes. “Southside with You,” running a brisk hour and twenty minutes, is a fully realized, intricately imagined, warmhearted, sharp-witted, and perceptive drama, one that sticks close to its protagonists while resonating quietly but grandly with the sweep of a historical epic.

The results don’t resemble a stunt far from it. It stars Parker Sawyers as the twenty-eight-year-old Barack, a Harvard Law student and summer associate at a Chicago law firm, and Tika Sumpter (who also co-produced the film) as the twenty-five-year-old Michelle, a Harvard Law graduate and a second-year associate at the same firm. It’s a drama about Barack Obama and Michelle Robinson’s first date, in Chicago, in the summer of 1989. The writer and director Richard Tanne’s first feature, “Southside with You,” which will be released next Friday, is an opening act of superb audacity, a self-imposed challenge so mighty that it might seem, on paper, to be a stunt. PHOTOGRAPH BY MATT DINERSTEIN / MIRAMAX / ROADSIDE ATTRACTIONS Richard Tanne’s “Southside with You,” starring Tika Sumpter and Parker Sawyers, is a warmhearted and sharp-witted dramatization of the Obamas’ first date.

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