by Len Weiler
It’s late in the evening when the nameless young woman gets into the somewhat funky old yellow cab at New York’s John F Kennedy airport. It’s obvious, by the casual way she leaves her suitcase for the driver to handle and the way she quickly settles into the backseat, that she’s not a nervous tourist. She’s done this drill before. She looks tired and acts a bit bored, knowing that the drive from JFK to her destination in midtown Manhattan is going to take a while. Because she’s played by the attractive and magnetic Dakota Johnson (as a platinum blond here), the young lady looks pretty great. Johnson (who also co-produced the film) is also a workaholic. In the seven and a half years since her breakout (fame-wise) as the erotic lead in
Fifty Shades of Grey (2015), Johnson has appeared in eighteen (18) feature films, and in at least half of them has played the lead or co-lead.
The taxi in Daddio is literally and figuratively the vehicle for the story that unfolds over the next hour and a half, entirely through an intriguing conversation which springs up between Johnson’s character and her crusty, salt of the earth driver, played by veteran Sean Penn. Penn, a two-time “best actor” Oscar winner known for the intensity of his performances in films like Dead Man Walking (1995), I Am Sam (2001), and Mystic River (2003), has nearly dropped off the cinematic map over the last decade or more - largely, he has said, because he lost interest. Thankfully, he was lured back for this project, because he is just fantastic here – the engine of the movie, you might say. Penn’s face has aged a lot since you probably last saw him and he so inhabits his character that you likely wouldn’t recognize him, if you did not know in advance that Penn was in the movie.
The cabby’s name is Clark, but even he thinks it should have been something else, “Vinnie” maybe. Clark has been driving a cab all his life and has seen it all, or so he believes. He just about lives in that cab – even has a little potted plant on the center console to keep him company. It’s a lonely job, after all. In some ways it’s a strange job for Clark, given that he’s quite a garrulous guy. He’s also naturally curious about people. Johnson’s character is his last fare of the day, and it is not long before he strikes up a conversation with her. She never provides a name and he just calls her “girlie” – which becomes the character’s name in the credits.
Daddio starts out innocently enough: Where are you coming from? [Oklahoma.] Do you live in NY or just visiting? [I live here.] What do you do? [I’m a coder.] You mean computers and stuff? [Yep, computers and stuff.] What were you doing in Oklahoma? [Visiting my half-sister.] Are you from there? [yes.] And so on. Pretty soon, prodded by Clark’s proletarian charisma, Girlie begins to open-up, and the conversation gets more personal, more revealing, more intimate. It’s not long before they’re talking about Girlie’s romantic situationship about which Clark confidently offers Girlie some unsolicited and uncomfortable (if old-fashioned) quasi-fatherly advice. A bit later, the conversation shifts to questions about Clark’s life and his two marriages. In both cases, layers are peeled away and personal histories revealed.
But in case you’re wondering whether, short of a scenario like that in
My Dinner With Andre (1981) [in which a raconteur tells stories about his strange experiences to a mostly passive everyman], a two-hander conversation can really sustain one’s interest over the length of a full-length picture, in the case of
Daddio the answer is yes, very much so. The dialogue between the two leads is charming, frequently amusing and increasingly seductive. It’s fascinating too to see their stories revealed via such an initially oblique conversation. In Girlie’s case, there’s a bit of a sidebar too: during breaks in the dialogue-driven ’action’ she is exchanging texts, increasingly salacious, with a man with whom she’s been having an affair, even as she is coming to question that relationship, thanks in no small part to Clark’s interrogation. Of course, the very fact that Girlie and Clark are strangers is what allows each of them to open up as they do, touching on topics too difficult or too personal to share with friends or acquaintances. That each understands they are never going to see the other again is freeing, because it’s safe! Yet, as Clark drops Girlie off at her journey’s destination, there is a mutual wistfulness, a shared sense between the two, that their time together was a very special moment.
This is the first feature length movie for Christy Hall, who both wrote and directed. The narrative, at its core tells a very old story (as Clark recognizes), but in Hall’s novel structuring it feels fresh and contemporary. There are some very cool flourishes here. For example, incidents or comments lightly touched on early in the picture are cleverly re-introduced much later on, to wry and meaningful effect. And while there’s not any sense of sexual seduction (or predation) in the conversation between the old cabby and his lovely, much younger passenger, there is kind of a warm-hearted flirtation. And it’s also hard to fault Hall’s confident direction.
A movie is a team effort of course, and Hall had the good sense to team up with veteran cinematographer Phedon Papamichael, some of whose past work includes
Sideways (2004) and
The Descendants (2011) with director Alexander Payne;
Walk the Line (2005),
3:10 to Yuma (2007) and
Ford v Ferrari (2019) with director James Mangold; and
The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020) with Aaron Sorkin. Here, the biggest challenge was how to make a movie that takes place almost exclusively in a moving vehicle NOT be claustrophobic or visually dull. Part of the answer was to mix things up, switching it around from shots encompassing both characters, capturing their reactions as the back-and-forth conversation progresses; to close-ups of Penn or (more frequently) Johnson at various times, particularly during contemplative moments, prompting us to consider their characters more deeply; along with occasional shots of the approaching New York skyline, of the taxi in transit or tied up in traffic on the Long Island expressway, and so forth. The pacing, camerawork and editing are close to perfect, working together to keep us engaged .
Other challenges were more technical: how to rehearse the actors and then do multiple takes, scene-by-scene, if they are in a vehicle the whole time zipping along the highway? Adding a further degree of difficulty, how to do this when everything is happening at night? When I first saw Daddio at Tribeca, the screening was followed by a Q&A with the director, who described the ingenious methodologies* they used to overcome these problems. Bottom line: it all worked. [*I didn’t want to get in the weeds here, but if you are interested, email me and I’ll explain.]
Reviewers like me are called critics for a reason, and I do have a couple of critical observation about
Daddio. First, while both actors share screen time fairly equally and each gets a chance to truly shine - and they do, the main story centers on Johnson’s character, Girlie. So we see a lot of her. Johnson is very attractive and director Christy Hall seemingly can’t resist making the most of this. It’s like she’s in love with Johnson. So we get lots of closeups, platinum hair always backlit, lipstick and makeup always perfect. I never tire of a pretty face, but I felt along the way, and now in retrospect, that the near perfection of Girlie’s looks, sitting in the back of the cab supposedly exhausted, detracts from her believability.
Secondly, and perhaps this is nitpicking, I note that while the writing is good, the bones of Girlie’s narrative were a little too skeletal. There was plenty of meat there and had Hall delved a little deeper and her screenplay’s dialogue been more incisive, in my view Daddio could have gone from a very good film to an exceptional one – especially given the talents of her two actors. Perhaps Hall, as a first-timer, was playing it a little too safe.
Most viewers I’ve spoken with liked
Daddio a lot, finding it engaging and fascinating. I did too. It was a revelation to see Sean Penn, in particular, he was so very good. Despite my criticism about the undue attention given to Dakota Johnson’s looks, her performance was also excellent and touching at times. I’ve recommended
Daddio to several friends already. Now I’m recommending this movie to you.
1 hour 40 minutes
Grade: A-
In theaters. No VOD or streaming date has been announced at this time.
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