by Elisa Leonelli
June 28, 2024
Daddio, with Dakota Johnson and Sean Penn, presented at the Telluride and Toronto festivals in the fall of 2023 and at Tribeca in April of this year, is out in U.S. cinemas on June 28, but has no distribution in Italy yet.
It is a low-budget independent film by novelist and rookie director Christy Hall, produced by Tea Time Pictures, the production company of Dakota Johnson.
Dakota Johnson-Daddio (c) Sony Classics
A blonde and elegant woman lands at night at New York’s JFK airport and gets on a taxi to Manhattan where she lives, begins a conversation with the 60-year-old chatterbox taxi driver, who explains to her that, from his personal experience as a husband who has often betrayed both wives, a man only seeks sex from a young mistress, not love. Girlie, the name of the character played by Johnson, means little girl, even if she is over thirty years old, given the naiveté she shows in believing that it is love the sexual passion of the lover who sends her dirty sex messages on the mobile phone, despite the fact that it should be clear to her that this man has no intention of leaving his wife and children. She thinks he has found in him a father figure, a daddy-o (a variation of dad and daddy, the name used by most American children for father), since he is the father of three young children. Little by little she realized that this relationship filled the emotional void created by her father’s indifference when she was a child. At the end of the trip, delayed by a car accident, these two so different types became friends and discovered many hidden truths about themselves.
Director Hall writes in the production notes: “Girlie is a modern and independent woman, accomplished and aware, but she is surprised to discover that she still has a childhood fragility beneath the surface. Clark is a vulgar guy tells it like it is, and belongs to a generation when men could not demonstrate their feelings, but reveals a hidden tenderness. We all want to be understood, but we are terrified of being vulnerable. During this conversation, a deeply human relationship is created between two strangers.”
Director and protagonists participate in a conversation after a screening of Daddio in the offices of the powerful Hollywood agency CAA, Creative Artist Agency, on June 14.
Dakota Johnson-Daddio (c) Sony Classics
Dakota Johnson (34) confesses that it was difficult to find funding for this film that takes place entirely inside a taxi, but Sean Penn’s participation helped a lot. She had personally delivered the script to him, since they are friends and neighbors in Malibu. “Because we know and love each other, it seemed to me that it would be possible for us to create this kind of tension between two strangers, without moments of embarrassment or weirdness. I wouldn’t have wondered, ‘Does Sean think I’m a bad actress, since he doesn’t look at me in the rear-view mirror?’ I was comfortable being a bit of a bitch at certain times, as we were in this intimate taxi space where I feel safe in the back seat. Sean felt protected because the film was produced, written and directed by women.”
Sean Penn-Daddio (c) Sony Classics
Sean Penn (63) admits that he hasn’t found scripts that interest him for years, but working with these two women enticed him, and then he could allude to some of his personal experiences through the words of the taxi driver Clark. “At certain points in my career I felt that I was in what athletes call the zone, with stories and directors that I connected with, but for a long time I have been outside that zone, I don’t like anything or at least I don’t find projects that I think I can add something valuable to. When Dakota showed up at my door with this script, because we’re friends and I admire her, I got carried away by the wave she’s navigating with the many interesting films she’s doing. After reading only ten pages I realized that it was a gift that does not often happen to an actor over sixty like me. It was very well written, so I feel lucky.”
Asked if he had ever had an in-depth conversation with a taxi driver, Penn replied: “Yes, I once met a taxi driver who had immigrated to the United States from a country that has been talked about a lot lately (perhaps Iran), and given the history of our two countries’ relations with such different cultures, we were able to talk about it in quite a thorough way. In that case, I wanted to get involved, lower my defenses and express my opinions.”
Hall says, “I wrote Daddio as a play, thinking it would be presented live on stage, since I had no contacts in the Hollywood world, but I had always conceived it for the movie theater, because there are so many films of this kind in the history of cinema, with only two people in one room talking quietly about their problems. Just think of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954) with James Stewart and Grace Kelly. So I’m very grateful that you can see this on this big screen tonight.”
Posted on Best Movie, Italy