Tribeca Festival 2024 #2: An Update on Our Family, Linda Perry: Let It Die Here, Restless
Three more world premieres continue our coverage.
As the Tribeca Film Festival continues, so does my coverage of its programming slate. This edition sees television and film, documentary and narrative, all celebrating world premieres at the festival.
An Update on Our Family
Myka and James Stauffer were the picture of the 21st century American Dream: happy marriage, beautiful kids, and a self-built YouTube vlogging empire. At the center of it all was Huxley, an adorable young boy they adopted from China. Huxley was more than just their star — he was their son. Until one day, he wasn’t.
Whether you watched religiously or not, we were all there for the rise of family vloggers on YouTube. These are the folks who filmed every birth, birthday, Christmas, celebration, milestone, breakfast, lunch, dinner, scraped knee, new pool, and Barbie-sponsored tea party that took place within the walls of their homes, the place typically reserved for personal privacy. Maybe they posted every single day of the week, 365 days of the year, or maybe they had set dates and times. You could witness a stranger's child grow from embryo to toddler, watching every single step of the way. You could rock their merch and smash the like button.
Then there was the fall of the industry. We didn't all see it coming, but almost none of us were surprised by it when it did happen. Shay Carl (allegedly) cheated on his wife, the Saccone-Joly family fell back down to Earth, and countless other family vloggers were put under the microscope. The ethics of the entire thing seemed out of whack as children seemed to be exploited for monetary gain. Without the ability to consent, their whole lives were put on the internet for the entire world to see.
And then there were the Stauffers. Even with all the scandals and controversies and ethical dilemmas these vloggers created, this one might take the cake. In a summarizing sentence, Myka and James Stauffer adopted a young autistic boy, Huxley, from China and when they found his challenges too difficult, went through the process of "un-adopting" him.
Along with their four other children, everything this family did was posted on YouTube. Viewers watched them go through the adoption process, fly to China to pick him up, and then experience years of struggles (which, as some Sherlock viewers pointed out, included evidence of duct tape on the boy's wrists), all before Huxley just plain disappeared from their channel without a word. That's what An Update on Our Family chronicles, all while putting it in the context of the rest of the industry. The documentary is largely interesting because the story is interesting. The despicable, greedy, selfish nature of the parents is often upsetting and confounding. Many folks feel like the Stauffers made these decisions almost solely for the views and therefore monetization, and much less because it's something they actually had the capacity to handle.
The talking heads, meanwhile, show just how complicated this whole industry is, especially to those still in it. Mommy vlogger Hannah Cho, herself a transracial adoptee adopted by white parents, provides context and the closest thing we have to real-life experience, but she seems unable to grapple with the issues at hand. A similar family, called Earls Family Vlogs on Youtube and whose recent videos have titles like FIRST WORD! and Christmas Morning with the Earls Family 2023, seems at best clueless to the ethical problems and at worst defensive and secretive as they defend the Stauffers. "Be very careful," demands father Harold to his wife Rebecca when the subject is brought up by the filmmakers.
At 139 minutes spread across the episodes, this could have probably been a really tight 90-120 documentary, but this is very clearly the exact type of thing that will blow up on Netflix or Hulu. No distribution has been announced yet, but the discourse will be unavoidable when it is.
Linda Perry: Let It Die Here
As one of the most recognizable artists of the last 30 years, Linda Perry became an icon with her signature hat, attitude and chart-topping hit “What’s Up” with her band 4 Non Blondes. Since then, she has gone on to make a name for herself as a Grammy-nominated songwriter and producer, creating hits for artists such as Adele, Christina Aguilera, Brandi Carlisle, Miley Cyrus, Celine Dion, Ariana Grande, Alicia Keys, Dolly Parton, Pink and Gwen Stefani.
Linda Perry is one of those "people you don't know behind all the songs you love" types. She played some part, whether songwriting or producing, on tracks like Christina Aguilera's "Beautiful," Pink's “Get the Party Started” and "What's Up?" from 4 Non Blondes, of which she was a founding member and lead singer.
But she's not the hit-obsessed producer like a David Foster or a Clive Davis. No, her songs become hits because they come from real emotions and real places. People resonate with the authenticity and, whether they're aware of it or not, Perry's life story.
Don Hardy's documentary approaches its subject in a variety of ways. Professionally, there's footage of her working in her at-home studio with Dolly Parton or scoring the 2022 film Luckiest Girl Alive. She writes songs by riffing, humming, and twiddling the guitar until she gets to the bottom of the song. They're paired with interviews from Dolly, Christina, and Brandi Carlile. "Is there something a female producer can bring to a recording session or a songwriting session that is different from a male counterpart?" a male voice from behind the camera asks Brandi early in the film. "Nothing. It's the same," she says. "That's what I want everybody to realize." It's clear that Perry isn't special just because she's a woman, she's special because she's Linda Perry.
And Linda Perry is a complicated person. Her abusive relationship with her mother, who enters hospice and ultimately passes away over the course of the film, constantly affects the relationship she has with the young son she co-parents with Sara Gilbert. These stories of her childhood, which escalates into a teenage suicide attempt, are fantastically recreated with stop motion animation, narrated with Perry's storytelling. In one particularly desperate moment, where the pain of that childhood seems to compound with her present-day troubles, she films herself having a mental breakdown in her closet. "I've lost myself," she cries while Supertramp's "Take the Long Way Home" plays in the background. There's a reason she's playing this song. "I love Supertramp. It makes me feel good," she says.
The lyrics heard at this moment speak for themselves: When you're up on the stage, it's so unbelievable / Oh, unforgettable, how they adore you / But then your wife seems to think you're losing your sanity / Oh, calamity, is there no way out?
All of her life's biggest moments, highs and lows, are paired with music in some way. The title song is performed in a particularly freeing climactic moment where she leads a band in the song's composition, paired with the culmination of her feelings on all of the film's emotional subjects, including a formerly private run-in with breast cancer. Her songs are nothing if not honest and the same can be said of this documentary.
Restless
How far would you go to maintain a peaceful home? This is the quandary that Nicky, a single, mild-mannered woman and caregiver, faces after a group of young men move into the adjoining house. Nicky hopes that their first eardrum-bursting party is an anomaly, but what begins as her polite request to keep the music down quickly escalates into an angry series of confrontations that edge toward violence. Pushed to insanity after weeks of no sleep, she begins to contemplate increasingly severe means to find solitude.
If you've ever lived in an apartment, you've had those neighbors. The ones who always seem to be working on their bowling technique, but only when they're in the room right above your head. I know I've had them. Many of them. For example, when a frat house moved in next door (not unlike the movie Neighbors), I convinced one of the college boys to turn his speakers all the way up and enter my home so he could see the vibrations of my glassware. Weeks later, they knew they wanted to cause such a ruckus, they paid for us to stay in an out-of-town hotel so they could go nuts without complaint. At least they were aware.
In Restless, an aptly named film, Nicky (Lyndsey Marshal) is a bit of a loner. She likes to bake recipes she finds online. She cuddles with her kitty and watches tv. She listens to classical music. Her job at the nursing home is stressful enough and she just wants to come home and decompress. It's her home, after all. It should be her sanctuary.
But when Deano (Aston McAuley) and his gang of miscreant mates move in next door (in a flat that shares walls with hers, no less), they pretty quickly start disturbing the peace. The first night includes bed-rattling music, whoops and cheers, and excessively loud drinking. She politely asks Deano to turn it down. He seems receptive, but nothing changes.
Night after night, nothing changes, so she changes her tactics. She threatens them, offers homemade baked goods as a peace offering, calls the cops, tries to campaign the surrounding neighbors, but nothing helps. She begins to lose her mind. The lack of sleep is affecting her sanity. No time of day is safe from their existence, no part of her home is safe from the noise. When her cat...goes missing...she snaps.
This British film, playing under Tribeca's Viewpoints banner, is the feature debut from writer/director Jed Hart. What he sees as a dark comedy, I see as a psychological thriller. The entire film is underscored by that nonsensical, non-lyric-ed pulsing beat that only vaguely resembles music and only seems to be played by shitty neighbors. It's a fight-or-flight-inducing sound for anyone with this peace-shattering trauma.
McAuley so perfectly plays the unappealing asshole that you can always side with Marshal's easy-to-like character, even when her methods turn illegal. She has a naturally empathetic demeanor. Both her good parts and her bad parts are recognizable in all of us.
Media courtesy of Tribeca Festival.