The Daytrippers
Written and Directed by Greg Mottola
Starring Hope Davis (Eliza D'Amico), Stanley Tucci (Louis D'Amico), Parker Posey (Jo), Liev Schreiber (Carl), Anne Meara (Rita Malone), Pat McNamara (Jim Malone), Campbell Scott (Eddie)
THE DAYTRIPPERS is Greg Mottola's feature debut, and it's a fairly promising one, full of fine performances and well-written scenes. But if you find the memory of it slipping away from you within moments of its denouement, don't be surprised. The film's plot is loosely constructed, and although there is an intriguing interplay of theme and story, Mottola ultimately doesn't have enough control over his material to turn it into anything affecting or memorable. But his little micro-Odyssey is nonetheless a good trip; it's worth going along for the ride.
The story is rather picaresque in structure; our heroes, somewhat hapless suburbanites, take an impromptu trip through the amoral jungles of Manhattan. All this gets rolling when Hope, who appears to have a strong, loving relationship with her husband, Louis, finds a love note in the form of an early modern lyric poem, and doesn't know what to make of it. Encouraged by her domineering and slightly unhinged mother (played with frightening presence by Anne Meara), she decides to head down from Long Island to Louis's Manhattan office to ask him in person. Dad (an underused Pat McNamara) drives; Mom, younger sister Jo (played with casual quirkiness by Parker Posey), and younger sister's beau Carl (Liev Schreiber) tag along for the ride, offering moral support and comic relief, as the mood dictates.
When Louis turns out to have taken the day off from work, the family's suspicions grow, and they spend most of the rest of the film searching around Manhattan for Louis, or for evidence of his infidelity. This quest, such as it is, is the real meat of the film, for as our displaced adventurers roam about town, they bump into all sorts of eccentric urban types whose concerns are, more or less, intertwined with their own. Everyone's life in the city is all about sex, and about family. The dysfunctional troupe meets up with a son who's hiding his child-support-dodging dad from the police; with sisters squabbling over their mother's estate, fighting tooth and nail down to the last codeine pill. Hope meets a spurned lover at a party, while Jo meets a man who might be perfect -- or might be a clever, manipulative schemer. It's just another day in the big city.
But the real theme here is how the thick glaze of a good story gets scraped away by real pain. Most of our little suburban squadron looks at their trip into the city as something of a lark, but for Hope and Louis, it's deadly serious. Mottola has found a great newcomer in Eliza D'Amico; she's able to make her face speak louder than her family's words, and some of the film's most affecting moments come while we watch her face tugging at itself with worry while family glibly froths.
The rest of the cast is also strong. Liev Schreiber gives a convincingly naive performance as a young intellectual without many good ideas; he has some difficulty in scenes that require more emotional intensity, but then, so does his character. And Stanley Tucci, during his brief moments on screen, is utterly, hopelessly, devastatingly convincing in a part that requires him to play a good liar.
At its best, THE DAYTRIPPERS reminds me of recent films that celebrate the bizarre way that human lives are woven together in the modern city -- films like Krzysztof Kieslowski's RED and Wong Kar-wai's CHUNGKING EXPRESS. But here these themes serve more as connective tissue than anything else, holding together a plot that might otherwise -- and sometimes still does -- seem rambling and pointless. In the end, the film's main pleasures are momentary and idiosyncratic -- the leisurely progress of a plot and the pleasantly unpredictable performances of the lead players. These are not pleasures to be sneered at, mind you. Mottola's debut is on the whole a real pleasure to watch, a deft piece of storytelling with some moments of real beauty and passion.
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