THE STORY – A woman gets into a taxi at New York airport and gradually tells the driver about her unfortunate decisions that led to an affair with a married man; the driver also reveals more and more about his life.
THE CAST – Dakota Johnson & Sean Penn
THE TEAM – Christy Hall (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 101 Minutes
It’s the most straightforward setup imaginable: An unnamed young woman takes a cab home from NYC’s JFK airport. Her driver engages her in conversation, and throughout a single cab ride, both driver and passenger learn something about themselves, each other, and the human condition. It’s a simple setup but a tricky one to get right; if even one element of the film is off, the whole thing falls apart. Thankfully, playwright Christy Hall has thoroughly thought out every second of her debut feature “Daddio,” resulting in a highly confident, unassuming film that resonates far more deeply than a glance at its plot might suggest.
It helps, of course, that Hall has recruited two of our best actors to star in the film: Sean Penn and Dakota Johnson. They make for an intriguing pairing: Penn possesses a looseness in even his most mannered performances that bounces perfectly off of Johnson’s natural aloofness, while her naturalism in the moment is the perfect foil for his studied, more actorly tendencies. They also slot very nicely into everyman/everywoman types, able to throw off their celebrity personas to appear as ordinary, relatable people on screen. This is precisely what Hall’s screenplay requires, and her stars repay her sharp writing with piercing performances. Both cabbie Clark and the young woman only credited as Girlie (what Clark calls her) are hiding things about themselves, but Johnson and Penn see the surface braggadocio and disaffection as well as the uglier, more private emotions going on under the surface. Even when doing something as seemingly innocuous as picking up a phone, Johnson conveys a whole backstory with her eyes, while Penn knows exactly how much weight even the slightest of pauses can hold. They build a thoroughly believable rapport before they even get a moment to look directly into each other’s eyes, getting the audience invested in these characters before the screenplay reveals its true intentions.
As great as the performances are, that wouldn’t matter if they didn’t have anything compelling to say. Hall has an ear for the natural rhythms of conversation, the ebbs and flows that communicate how comfortable people are with each other. Communication is, in fact, one of the film’s central themes, specifically, how we live in a world where we constantly communicate with people but rarely really sit down and listen to them. Stuck in a cab with no escape (especially when they get stopped by an accident), Clark and Girlie are forced to either share something genuine with each other or sit in silence. Clark is too much of a talker to be quiet, and Girlie is too intrigued by him (and too eager to forget her own problems) not to engage. The journey their conversation takes is circuitous but goes to some surprising places, touching on how meeting people has changed in the age of social media, how men and women approach relationships, and why we keep secrets even from people we love. It should be too much, or at least too heady, and indeed, there are moments when the characters come across more as therapists than a cab driver and a computer programmer. However, Hall’s dialogue has a light touch that beautifully counterbalances the profundity of what she wants to say.
That light touch extends to the cinematic craft, as well. Dickon Hinchliffe’s twinkly score never descends into treacle and keeps the heavier moments from feeling overly dramatic. Phedon Papamichael’s cinematography perfectly captures the beauty of Manhattan at night, and the bright lights give the city an almost magical appearance grounded in dirt and concrete. The camera finds its way into every possible angle in Clark’s cab, capturing even the tiniest nuances of Johnson and Penn’s performances. It’s these small moments, when we’re up close to Clark or Girlie, that we can get into their heads and see what they’re really feeling. Penn and Johnson nail several revelatory moments that match the best work of their careers, but Hall’s script constantly zigs when you expect it to zag, disarming the audience in the best way. There are no spoilers here, but when Girlie finally reaches her destination in Hell’s Kitchen, it’s clear that while this ride may not change either of their lives, it was the ride they both needed that night. They’ve both grown close, but that’s partly because they know they’ll never see each other again. Even still, you can see how much it meant to them to have someone to share with, how the act of opening themselves up to another person helped them through their issues. It’s the perfect invitation to the audience to follow suit in their own lives – if not with a random cab driver, then with someone you’re closer with. Genuine human connection is rare, and you have to work for it, but as “Daddio” shows, it’s more than worth the effort.
