While Austin’s favorite festival is a big event for genre filmmaking, they also welcome more traditional storytelling, the kind more focused on character dynamics than hauntings or serial killers. There’s a long history of dramedy screenwriters bringing their latest projects to this festival, and one of the most interesting things about this year’s program was the reveal of a new project by Chicago indie filmmaking legend Joe Swanberg, who reunites with his most loyal collaborator, the star of his “Drinking Buddies” and “Digging for Fire,” Jake Johnson. Riffing with co-stars Dakota Fanning and Cory Michael Smith, Johnson and Swanberg have made a dramedy that might be intolerable for those uninterested in watching people try to figure out their relationship status for two hours, but its stars do a great deal to elevate some admittedly over-written dialogue. While “The Sun Never Sets” may not be my favorite Swanberg, it’s nice to have him back on the indie scene. Don’t wait so long for another one, Joe.
Fanning is charming as Wendy, the longtime girlfriend of Johnson’s Jack. He is divorced with two wonderful kids, but he has been upfront with Wendy from the beginning that he’s at a very different chapter of his life than she is. He does not want more kids; he doesn’t even want to marry again. And it’s worth noting that Wendy and Jack are different in more ways than age gap—she’s into the outdoors, even considering buying a boat; he’s an indoor child. When Wendy’s last freewheeling friend announces that she’s pregnant, Wendy brings the agita related to what feels like the end of something back to Jack, who has the dumbest idea ever: He tells Wendy to go play the field and make sure that there isn’t someone out there who fits her needs better than he does. He still loves her, but he doesn’t want her to feel trapped and resentful.
The truth is that Jack thinks Wendy will come running back, more confident in their relationship to put away a version of herself she’s not ready to discard. He didn’t plan on Wendy running into her ex, Chuck (Smith). Wendy left Chuck years ago because he wasn’t mature enough for their dynamic, but he seems to have improved with age, a truth that sends Jack spiraling. He tries becoming a hiking guy, makes demands on her, dates other people, and just coping, but nothing seems to work.
The vast majority of “The Sun Never Sets” consists of people talking about what they need and want from a relationship, sometimes in a way that doesn’t ring true. It’s one of those things where people often sound like they know what the next line is going to be and where the plot is going. However, what it lacks sometimes in dialogue, it makes up in character detail and even visuals. Swanberg shot it on 35mm in Alaska (a nod to the land of sunlight in the title), and it looks so much better than your average streaming dramedy. Most of all, Fanning and Johnson are just remarkably easy to root for, the kind of performers who can make a clunky script feel smooth through the sheer power of their likability.
A very different kind of mind game unfolds in Gloria Mercer’s effective “A Safe Distance,” a film so influenced by Patricia Highsmith’s character-driven noirs that it even directly references Deep Water, and the Ben Affleck movie made recently that adapted it. It doesn’t really come together like I hoped it would in the final act, but Mercer has a solid eye, and directs performers well, especially the charismatic Tandia Mercedes, who holds the midsection of the film together. A clearly personal film—you don’t have to read in the production notes that it was made in response to the end of “a difficult relationship” to sense that in the storytelling—it’s a tale of two women who end up empowering each other in unexpected ways, even though one is a bank robber.
Bethany Brown plays Alex, a Canadian woman who has gone on a camping trip with her slimy boyfriend Joey, the kind of guy who isn’t overtly obnoxious as much as casually selfish. You get the impression that he’s never asked what she wants for dinner, much less noticed that she doesn’t really want to go camping. When Joey actually proposes on a lookout on the trip, Alex turns him down. What does the hurt man-child do? Sneaks away in the middle of the night, leaving Alex stranded. That’s when she stumbles into the camp of Kianna (Mercedes) and Matt, a couple living off the grid, in part because the authorities are looking for them for a string of armed bank robberies.
Before you know it, Alex has joined this Bonnie and Clyde in a throuple, even becoming enticed by the allure of bank robbing, which Matt insists is a victimless crime given they’re taking from corporations with insurance to back up the loss. The problem is that Matt is a bit of a jerk, too, which might make him a third wheel soon.
Some of the material about the “freedom” of the criminal life is a bit overwritten (although that’s sometimes-intentional given Matt is a bit of a blowhard), and the final act has a a few choices and a twist that didn’t land for me, but the bulk of “A Safe Distance” works. Not only is Mercedes a magnetic performer, Mercer shoots her limited settings well, giving the film a lush, natural look. I think Patricia Highsmith would have dug it.
Finally, there’s Aisha Evelyna’s “Seahorse,” a drama with the best of intentions that falls short by not truly committing to what I believe is its intent: Humanizing the unhoused in a way that makes them more than just figures in a news story or people overlooked on the street. Evelyna also wrote and stars, which often leads to problems in indie drama as there aren’t enough voices in the mix to work together in harmony. I fully believe that Evelyna set out to do something dramatically sound, but “Seahorse” disappoints by using an unhoused character in a manner that feels more manipulative than genuine, turning him into a figure for a protagonist’s journey instead of someone who feels like they have an interiority and back story of their own.
Evelyna plays Nola, a Toronto sous chef rising in the industry enough to have a truly annoying boss. One day, while trying to get away from the jerk and taking the trash out behind her restaurant, she sees a figure from her past in the alley: her estranged father. She begins a tentative connection with the man as “Seahorse” flashes into the past to reveal some of the reasons they split in the first place. As her new relationship threatens to derail her career, she’s forced to make some tough choices about a man she thought she’d probably never see again.
Again, “Seahorse” comes from such a genuine place that it feels almost mean to come down on it, but filmmaking is about execution as much as it is intention, and I believe the former clouds the latter here. I trust that Evelyna set out to make a movie about the cruel manner in which we treat the unhoused in the U.S. and Canada through the lens of a character study, but the blunt truth is that I didn’t believe the emotion of “Seahorse” enough because the people in it all felt like ingredients in that overcooked recipe instead of three-dimensional people.