Female Film Critics 24/375
Two strangers make an unexpectedly meaningful connection in writer-director Christy Hall’s feature debut, Daddio. Play-like in the simplicity of its setting and focus on dialogue, this “two hander” drama is a fascinating character study that features nuanced, memorable performances by stars Sean Penn and Dakota Johnson as, respectively, a brash New York City cabbie and the pensive passenger he picks up at JFK airport to drive into Manhattan.
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Writer/director Christy Hall has created a very realistic, meaningful and intense film with Daddio, her first feature. It wouldn’t be the powerhouse that it is, however, without the collaboration of stars Dakota Johnson and Sean Penn, DP Phedon Papamichael, and composer Dickson Hinchliffe. Given nearly all of the story happens in one cab. It’s amazing, even given Johnson and Penn’s performances, how our attention never wavers. Clearly Hall has good taste and knows how to collaborate, and that is a great sign of what we might expect in her future.
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In this cinematic confessional, Hall takes us on a night drive through the veins of New York City, in a film with a finger on the pulse of human connection. Her actors are up for the ride. Penn plays a world-weary cab driver with so much tension, I kept expecting Daddio to turn into a thriller along the lines of Collateral (2024). I’ve met men like that, who spin from laughing to rage faster than you blink. Instead, Penn gives us a grizzled softie who delivers empathy with razored profanity and piercing insight. In crafting his counterpart, Hall has a history of writing acute studies of women in bad situations.
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Unfolding largely in real time over one hour and forty-one minutes, Daddio follows an unnamed woman (Dakota Johnson) headed home to the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood in Manhattan from JFK International Airport in Queens. In no mood to chat at first, she soon warms up to the driver (Sean Penn), a crusty guy ranting about how paying by apps and credit cards means no one throws you a little extra anymore. One of the smart touches in Daddio is how the talky script doles out character details. Daddio also is a universal one about finding meaning and connection in unlikely places, showing life can be a surprising trip.
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The Telluride Film Festival, always held over Labor Day Weekend in that gorgeous Colorado town, celebrated fifty years with a dazzling diversity. The twenty films I squeezed into five days ranged from director Tod Browning’s 1927 The Unknown, starring Lon Chaney and Joan Crawford, to writer/director Justine Triet’s intriguing Anatomy of a Fall, this year’s prestigious Cannes Palme d’Or winner.
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