One of the lesser-known impacts of rideshare apps on the taxicab business is that you’re now far less likely to have an immensely personal and revealing discussion about your life with Sean Penn. Rideshare apps come up early in Daddio – the feature-length debut of writer-director Christy Hall – when Penn’s taxicab driver, Clark, launches into a mild rant about his dying industry. He’s noticed that his last customer for the night, a young woman who looks like she has a lot on her mind, hasn’t defaulted to going on her phone. “It’s nice that you’re not on your phone,” he says, “I see you’re human – not plugged in.” The small relationships we form in everyday life, in this case the kinship between a driver and passenger, are the bread and butter that make up Daddio’s central, warm-hearted thesis: it’s a love letter to the meaningful connections we can form when we decide to pay attention and open up our hearts to a complete stranger who might have something valuable to teach us.
Like 2013’s Locke, Daddio takes place entirely within a car, ostensibly in real-time. It’s a bottle movie, with the sort of high-concept premise that demands a strong command over craft in order to overcome its inherent implausibility. Dakota Johnson plays an unnamed young woman, credited as “Girlie,” who arrives home from an emotional trip and directly into Clark’s taxicab. Over the 90-minute ride from JFK to midtown Manhattan, a discussion occurs that slowly unfurls both of their lives and the emotions they’ve been hiding within. The woman corresponds with an unseen person on the phone, a married man with whom she is having an affair, while Clark wrestles with his own memories. It’s the type of movie in which characters speak with an unrealistic and often comical specificity while imparting the exact wisdom and platitudes their counterparts need to hear. It shouldn’t work, and sometimes it doesn’t. Still, the movie is better than one would expect.
Much of the film’s success comes from its performances. Penn has had a rocky past few years, with some poorly-received directorial efforts and a shaky personal reputation. However, he’s excellent here, in a role that could’ve easily been mishandled. There’s an obvious age difference between the two characters, and the dynamic of a much older man peering into a young woman’s personal life could come off as creepy. There is, of course, inherent tension in this dynamic, but it’s never the point. It’s a testament to the strength of Penn’s performance, as well as Hall’s writing, that they pull off such a tricky balance. Penn’s craggy features convey a landscape of pain and personal experience, speaking to a deep empathy inherent to his interest in Johnson’s character, perhaps even imagining himself as a father figure. His eyes, both gentle and inquisitive, convey subtle shifts in tone and emotion that grant genuine gravitas to the character.
Johnson, also a producer on the film, is in fine form, a much-needed bounce back from this year’s wildly embarrassing Madame Web (not her fault, but still). Johnson leans heavily on understated tics, biting her nails and pursing her lips while looking wistfully out the window, to convey inner turmoil. These expressions are a bit overplayed, but her work is mostly sharp, especially as she navigates interactions both seen and unseen. Johnson also has a captivating stare, often reflected in the rear-view mirror of Clark’s taxi, which the film skillfully utilizes to imply the palpable connection between the two. Her aloofness as an actress, sometimes unfairly interpreted as having limited range, is exactly why she could never play a superhero. However, it’s perfect for drawing the audience into the understated character she plays here.
The biggest challenge facing a film like Daddio is creating an engaging visual language. Cinematographer Phedon Papamichael breathes life into Clark’s taxicab with engaging and dynamic camerawork, making ample use of revealing close-ups and split-diopter shots, as well as using lenses that imbue the look of New York’s nighttime skyline with a distinctly dreamlike feel. Visually, the movie is quite dark, but there’s a warmth to the material that compliments this setting nicely. The score, by composer Dickon Hinchliffe, can be needlessly insistent, but mostly lingers mildly in the background. Daddio stumbles in its final minutes, as Hall’s screenplay concludes with a somewhat saccharine final scene that too neatly wraps up the compelling dynamic shared throughout the film. The type of situation that Daddio depicts only occurs in a screenwriter’s head, and it would’ve been nearly impossible to overcome the inherent flaws of its too-neat conceit. But elsewhere, there’s a rare complexity to the characterizations, both on and off camera, that make the movie more compelling than one would expect. The ride is a bit bumpy, yet has moments of piercing clarity.
Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics
The post Daddio appeared first on Spectrum Culture.