Dakota Johnson brings Daddio to life @TIFF2023

Remember when you heard about the premise of the film Phone Booth? Then you wondered if you wanted to watch Colin Farrell stuck in a phone booth for a few hours. You would probably think the same if you read the synopsis of director Christy Hall‘s Daddio. The film takes place mainly in a cab between Dakota Johnson and Sean Penn. Penn plays the cab driver Will Clark who picks her at up JFK airport to her destination in Midtown. After a long moment of silence and glances between the two, the communication begins. It is New York interesting from the get-go.

First off the character Dakota Johnson plays does not reveal her name at all in the film. She reveals that she just got back from and is from Oklahoma. Her trip was to see her bitchy sister had a few interesting evenings together. She claims they haven’t seen each other in a while, so you see that she does not have that much family around her in New York City. After probing questions from Clark, we also find out that she is surprisingly a computer engineer. We see that Clark has no idea about today’s technology after driving a cab for like 20 years. The tension between the two eases up when we see that these two opposites have a unique little chemistry building after moments of awkwardness. But there is also another character involved in the film who only comes to text her on the phone. It is definitely a guy who wants to see her right after she gets home from the cab ride.

Sex in the City

But you see that Clark comes to school Dakota Johnson’s character throughout the course of the cab ride. Not only cause she is from Oklahoma but she seems to be at the age where she feels that she loses value which happens to be at the 30 mark. Clark starts to probe around her love life. She reveals that she is sleeping with a married man or somewhat of a sugar daddy. This is where Clark gives his two cents about the world the two live and how men and women co-exist. Clark also starts to reveal more of himself and his past marriages and how things were back then. But Clark understands the current climate of relationships, especially in the Big Apple where things can be very lonely and dark. But the way she receives his tutelage from him will actually help her out in the end.

The lewd texts from her “Daddio” are quite direct, especially from an older married man. But like Clark says, men don’t grow up and they always want a new “candy” to play with. This and everything he says starts to sink into her in both a positive and negative manner. But Clark is just an urbanite New Yorker just like everyone else who thinks they know everything and rambles on. Sometimes that’s just not good for everyone, especially for the character Dakota Johnson plays.

Daddio is a unique premise but it actually works because the conversation between the both of them is engaging and dynamic. We all have relationship troubles, family issues and existential questions. The anxiety that stems from these subjects gets relieved when we simply communicate with each other. The way both Sean Penn and Dakota Johnson communicate and how much they reveal to one another in such a small time frame is astounding. What director Christy Hall is commenting on is how a simple conversation between two people works wonders. And that today’s way of communicating through our cell phones is dislodging the integrity of us all.

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