Tribeca Festival 2024 #3: Griffin in Summer, DRIVER, Satisfied
We complete our coverage with three more world premieres.
As the 2024 Tribeca Film Festival has come to a close, so has my time covering the virtual version of the festival.
With any film festival, you always wish you had seen more, written about more, or just plain done more. But my coverage this time around sees a new favorite movie of the year, so I'd call it more than a success.
Many thanks to the folks at Tribeca for an engaging and powerful fest.
Griffin in Summer
Summer vacation is usually the time for kids to let loose, but for fourteen-year-old Griffin Nafly it's time to get down to the serious business of putting on his dramatic new play: an ambitious cross between Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and American Beauty. However, when his tween collaborators get distracted by more trivial pursuits like boys and camp, Griffin’s attention drifts toward Brad, the zoned-out handyman working at his house. Increasingly smitten and seeking a kindred spirit in Brad due to his failed career as a New York-based performance artist, Griffin finds himself embarking on an unforgettable summer.
Some movies just get you. Who you are at your very core.
Griffin in Summer, the feature debut of filmmaker Nicholas Colia, understands something about me.
That thing is being the little boy who wanted to write and direct plays, suckering friends to act and participate. But I, just like the young Griffin in the film, was bossy. Too bossy. I have a distinct memory of receiving the silent treatment from my friends (for multiple recesses) thanks mainly to my crimes of egomania directing the playground world premiere production of Star Wars: Episode 0.
Griffin (a breakout Everett Blunck) and his friends used to like putting on plays in his parent's basement in similar fashion, spending the summer days rehearsing and rehearsing until they got it just right. But as they've gotten older and his friends have found more interest in hard seltzers and new boyfriends, Griffin has only gotten more serious about his craft (something else I can relate to.)
His latest play, titled Regrets of Autumn (which, despite not actually being a joke, is one of the funniest things about the movie), is a combination of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and American Beauty. He has big dreams of putting on this play in a real theatre. But when his director (Abby Ryder Fortson, only getting better after her darling turn as the title character in Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.) goes on a vacation with her new boyfriend and his actor friends don't seem to be maturing in their artistic pursuits as quickly as he is (there's a scene where young Gordon Rocks calls line after line after line, the all too familiar life preserver of the actor who has absolutely no damn clue what his lines are supposed to be, that is so painfully funny and real), Griffin finds himself isolated and lonely.
There are so many things about this boy that I understand with my very being. We have so much in common. A lot of the film's humor is lovingly at his ambitious expense and I feel for him. I've been him. In many ways, I am still him.
Other things I found less association with, like being a young gay boy who falls in love with the pool boy his mom hired because his dad left. I've never been any of those things or in any of those situations. But by that point, the emotional arc of the film, I was so totally on Griffin's side.
Director Colia's script is so tight and succinct that the ending is telegraphed early thanks to numerous hint droppings along the way. (I found myself saying "If Griffin does X with Y at the town's Z, then it'll be good narrative construction but unfortunately obvious," - and that's exactly what happened.) But his film is not about plot mechanics, it's about characters and he's written a great one in Griffin. Blunck is so perfectly cast in the role, all of the kids are charmers (seriously, keep watching Fortson in the future), and hell, even Griffin's stage characters, despite being aging alcoholics, are delightful. I loved them all so much.
It's no wonder Colia won the festival's Founders Award for Best U.S. Narrative Feature and took home the award for Best Screenplay in a U.S. Narrative Feature. Whenever this film gets a wider release, everyone, but especially annoying and passionate theatre kids like me, will find something or someone to love.
DRIVER
After losing everything, Desiree Wood takes a second lease on life as a long-haul truck driver. By establishing the organization “REAL Women In Trucking,” Desiree has amassed an irreverent coalition of women drivers to advocate for an equitable and fair quality of life on the road, and ensure the welfare of women drivers within their male-dominated profession. While this line of work brings socially-precarious circumstances and solitude, these women undertake their jobs with an air of gallows humor and steely commitment to their work. However, as the American labor landscape continues to deteriorate and industry forces continue to be stacked against drivers deemed as replaceable, Desiree (alongside the sisterhood of truckers) struggles to find a sustainable path forward at the risk of losing it all once more.
I don't know anything about truck driving, much less the specific trials and tribulations of female truck drivers, an underappreciated but essential part of our country's commerce. Luckily, Desiree Wood, the subject of filmmaker Nesa Azimi's feature debut DRIVER, is passionate about both the profession and righting the industry's wrongs.
When she felt like the organization Women in Trucking wasn't doing enough to protect her or any of the ladies who find themselves truck drivers, she founded her own non-profit REAL Women in Trucking (I love the all-caps attitude.) Her work with RWIT is highlighted in the film, from working with new drivers (and listening to the all-too-similar stories of what got them into the career) to championing titans of the work to advocating for anyone who needs her in their corner. She's particularly passionate about protecting these women from the sexual harassment and assault found rampant in this male-dominated workplace. It's beautiful, powerful work.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of director Azimi's film. Desiree is the perfect subject for such a film and her voice, her opinions, and her strong feelings are found all throughout it. Where is Azimi's voice? Her cinéma vérité approach feels passive and we have to learn everything we learn from Desiree and the batch of supporting players. A lot is mentioned about the finances of the field, for example, but Azimi never provides context. When Desiree haggles for an extra $100 on an upcoming trip, I have no idea if that's a big win or a disappointing settle. It's a slice-of-life tale, but I (and I’m sure few others) know so little about that life to begin with that the slice is cut too thin. I found Desiree such an interesting figure that I read up on her further after watching the film. I learned more in that research, through journalistic facts and figures, online stories and testimonies, than I learned in DRIVER's interesting but ultimately frustrating 90 minutes.
Satisfied
In 2015, Hamilton opened and took the world by storm, earning near-universal critical acclaim and, some might say, forever changing the course of musical theater. It certainly changed the life of Renée Elise Goldsberry, who starred as Angelica Schuyler and would go on to win the Tony Award for her performance. The journey to that win was a hard one, though, filled with uncertainty, loss, and, ultimately, growth.
When Renée Elise Goldsberry was little, she wanted to be two things: a mother and a performer.
Satisfied, the documentary about her life during the reign of Hamilton (the film's title is a reference to the song of the same name for which she quickly became most famous), is about her pursuit to be as great as she can possibly be at both things.
For years, Goldsberry found success in television and on Broadway. She did 43 episodes of Ally McBeal, had a regular part on One Life to Live, and found herself on The Good Wife. On stage, she had done The Lion King, originated the role of Nettie in the original production of The Color Purple, and was the final Broadway Mimi in Rent. But she never had that part, the one that defined her or her career.
When, after many miscarriages delayed her motherhood, she found her family complete with her husband Alexis, son Benjamin, and adopted daughter Brielle, she decided to take a break from her career to focus on her at-home life.
That's when the phone rang with that phone call. It was a workshop production for a crazy-sounding rap musical called The Hamilton Mixtape. The rest is history.
Well, the rest is the documentary Satisfied. Hamilton heads will enjoy the never-before-seen behind-the-scenes footage and throwback to the height of that show's powers. Anyone who has had issues starting their own family or finding that often-unimaginable work-life balance will find comfort in her family's dynamic.
When those two worlds collide, the culmination of her personal and professional journeys, during her Tony acceptance speech, tears welled in my eyes. The speech is pleasant enough out of context, but with all of the documentary's information behind it, it's the opus of her life.
Media courtesy of Tribeca Festival.