Daddio
Dialogue may deceive, but faces are honest. Stories come alive through expressions. For a director to accept this reality and let faces do most of the work is an act of immense trust. “Daddio,” written and directed by Christy Hall, is a film about faces which is pretty remarkable when you consider that it’s a two character movie with wall to wall dialogue. Dakota Johnson’s and Sean Penn’s faces fill the screen, shot in extreme close up just the eyes sometimes, the smiles, the thoughts happening behind them. You want to listen to Hall’s dialogue, lean in closer; but Johnson and Penn pull us into their separate worlds and histories, each face telling a million stories.
“Daddio” takes place entirely in a yellow cab driving from JFK Airport back into Manhattan. The drive usually takes about 50 minutes without traffic. But tonight there’s an accident up ahead; they’re not going anywhere for a while. In today’s world, this entire drive could happen in silence; the passenger could be on her phone the whole time. But in “Daddio,” they start talking. The driver (Penn), Clark, and his passenger (Johnson), known only as Girlie, have a lot of time to kill. It starts as that kind of chit-chat the kind that goes on between strangers in a yellow cab flat fee or meter, cash or card? Still: connection made. Small talk is nice if you don’t think of it as small.
Where this conversation ends up going is really something, and it’s probably best that you don’t know too much going in. There is a feeling that anything could happen. It’s like the yellow cab is careening through an alternate universe where all the cards are on the table, and everything is up for grabs. Nobody’s in a fixed state there are actually openings for connections across all kinds of gaps generation gap, the man-woman gap, a sensibility gap. The cab is a space of no judgment, even when things get intense or there’s a disagreement. For whatever reason, these two have committed themselves to talking to one another until he gets her to her destination. Nobody opts out. A man keeps texting her asking her when she’ll arrive. There’s enough going on in her phone to keep her busy, and she could very easily tell Clark she doesn’t feel like talking and never look up from her phone again. Throughout there are moments where you can see Girlie getting dragged into the digital world, away from Clark’s analog world, sucked into the vortex of her relationship one that does not bring a smile to her face. Something’s obviously very wrong.
The chemistry between two actors is a mysterious thing. Johnson and Penn’s chemistry is so compellingly watchable which is fascinating because neither of them can move, they are looking at each other through the rear view mirror for most of it; but the back and forth is real.
Clark is a talkative person who has something to say about everything. It is not only her, he is curious about everything. ‘I’m just a guy who looks,’ he says. Nothing gets past him. This place is so warm compared to Penn, but it’s the kind of warmth that feels realer than real close to the bone. But don’t mistake him for a teddy bear. You get the sense he wouldn’t hesitate to hurt someone. He can be crude; he says exactly what he thinks, and some of his views and language are outdated. But he knows people, and isn’t afraid to “go there.” When he tells Girlie with an admiring smile, “You can handle yourself,” you know what he means. She’s tough; she looks him in the eye. She also seems like she’s lost and lonely, very far from home. He loves her already.
At first Girlie might seem like she strolled off the set of a film noir sad faced beautiful girl in back of cab looking for way out of fix she’s in but when this conversation takes its first provocative turn, as it inevitably does (subtly, with one comment from her), blink if you want but Clark doesn’t miss it.
Both these characters are tough customers different kinds of tough.
There is real mastery here in Hall’s ability not only to write toward specific challenges presented by filming one’s own material (and by filming an entire movie inside a car) but also simply to meet those challenges and solve them onscreen staging (like that man at Times Square), framing (how many places can we put Penn within that frame?); building tension between two actors without letting either go over top or leaden down bottom; playing this particular ride throughout history of movie rides set mostly inside cars (“Locke” being natural reference point here, I guess), making darkness work, and maybe work better, on tiny screen. (Phedon Papamichael’s cinematography is beautiful and moody, with lights of Manhattan blurred into abstraction out the windows, shadows and lights brushing through interior space around Clark and Penn in backseat; also Johnson’s face seen in rearview against back window this reminded me of those shots of Cybill Shepherd in final scene of “Taxi Driver” one of my favorite movies, which I haven’t seen since I started driving a cab.) What does it feel like to have these two heads inside yours for whole movie? You might start here.
Dickon Hinchliffe’s melancholy score is huge right away, from first frame where he sees her get into back seat of his cab: This isn’t gonna be just any ordinary ride. It’s a cliche but talking with someone is kind of like batting beach ball back forth both parties need to keep the ball in air, if someone drops the ball, other person has to pick up that ball and bat it back. Everyone knows what it feels like to toss beach ball over and have other person fail to bat it back. Or worse: Not toss it your way in first place.
She wrote for stage before she wrote for screen, she directed theater before she directed film, she’s written for television (she developed 2020 series “I Am Not Okay With This”). He’s a working actor who lives paycheck to paycheck until he doesn’t anymore (which isn’t yet). She met him once at party but didn’t really remember him until he got in her cab that night (or so she says). He doesn’t believe her because he remembers exactly what he was wearing when they met (and spent rest of night together), which was not weather appropriate. She starts talking about how much money you can make driving a cab if you know what you’re doing but loses steam halfway through, then tries to finish strong (but it’s not strong). He takes bait anyway: “How much?” She says she can make $500 cash before midnight if she wants to. He asks why she doesn’t want to. She says she does want to.
She is playwright and screenwriter who developed 2020 TV series “I Am Not Okay With This.” This is her feature film directorial debut. What a way to start?
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