Sundance 2017, Day Two: The Search for Feel-Good Entertainment

I watched the 45th president of the United States take the oath of office in the lobby of a Hampton Inn & Suites some 7 miles outside Park City. It's not how I envisioned my Inauguration Day going—I had visions of weeping over Bloody Marys in some overcrowded brewpub, publicists and journalists hugging and consoling one another in the middle of Main Street as the snow fell poetically around us. Instead it was among six or so other guests who, having just finished their complimentary waffle breakfast, gazed up at the TV with amused smiles plastered across their faces. I don't presume to know their political affiliations, but the ability to smile, even sardonically, was beyond me at that moment. The first thing I did in Trump's America was take a banana from the breakfast bar and call an Uber.

Inauguration Day at Sundance was one of the most boring days I've ever experienced at this festival. Day Two is usually when the flood of people truly descends, jamming traffic and filling up every available seat at the restaurants, but the overpriced sushi restaurant on Main that I stopped at for lunch was strangely deserted. (This was puzzling, because as my newly single Uber driver had informed me the night before, "Everyone on Tinder in Park City lists two interests: the outdoors and sushi.") I attended a SundanceTV panel about protest and patriotism hours after the inauguration that felt muted and lacking in candor despite the timing and subject matter. I passed by Jason Segel on my way to my next venue; he was looking at the ground and scowling, like pretty much everyone else. This might have been an emotional reaction to the day's events, but it also was snowing heavily all day, which has the same effect on one's face.

You had to feel a little bad for any Sundance film having its premiere on Friday. I wasn't in the room for the first screening of Dustin Guy Defa's Person to Person, but I caught a pre-festival screening, and I can't imagine it felt like much of anything. A shambling, grainy New York set ensemble piece that recalls Cassavetes with none of the peaks (you can now fill in your "recalls Cassavetes" square in Sundance Bingo) it has an unfortunate "welp, better use up this film stock" vibe to it. Its ensemble is Sundance-perfect (Michael Cera, Tavi Gevinson, Philip Baker Hall, and Abbi Jacobson, who is the runaway best of the bunch) and wants to charm you hard with its old-school, jazz-scored, ultimately feather-light feel. But Defa, who has been making well-received short films for more than a decade, doesn't quite rise to the demands of the feature format, stringing together a few short-film-scale stories that don't seem to really speak to one another, much less pay off.

The relentlessness of the snowstorm and the abundance of dramedies about life in New York were running into a numbing blur, blinding me with whiteness. Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, someone punched Richard Spencer in the face.

Because I failed to get into the overbooked premiere of Gillian Robespierre's Obvious Child follow-up Landline, I had two hours to burn, during which time I caught up with everything happening in Washington. All jokes aside, I was really starting to wonder: Was a 45-second clip of an alt-right asshole getting a fist in his mouth really going to be the most invigorating moment of my filmgoing day? It was close, but as it turns out, that honor would go to Holly Hunter, launching herself at a racist frat boy in The Big Sick.

The Big Sick was directed by The State alum Michael Showalter and written by Silicon Valley's Kumail Najiani and his wife and frequent collaborator, Emily V. Gordon, and it appears to be a more or less faithful adaptation of an early chapter in their relationship. (Gordon detailed the circumstances that the movie covers in this piece for Lenny Letter; it could be considered a spoiler.) It follows Kumail, a stand-up comedian/Uber driver, and Emily, a psychology grad student, who embark on a slowly blossoming romance despite the hurdles of their cultural differences. It sounds like a tired premise, but it's sold by the specificity and warmth of the script, and Showalter's now signature empathetic comedic direction, which lets characters be both ridiculous and fully human, by turns and often simultaneously.

The film takes a big left turn around halfway through, and Kumail ends up spending a lot of bonding time with Emily's parents, played wonderfully by Ray Romano and the aforementioned Hunter. All of these people feel knowable, and their relationships are constantly in a state of evolution. It makes a strong case for the autobiographical narrative film, a genre I'm usually not a fan of, if only because Nanjiani and Gordon are so clearly tapped in to what makes the people in their lives special and funny. The transition from the script to the direction appears to be seamless.

When Hunter lunges at that frat boy, it's in defense of Kumail—the bro's racist heckling interrupts Kumail's stand-up set. It's a moment of release for Hunter's character, who's been pinched and dazed and deeply sad up until that point. I wanted it to represent a shift in my festival experience as well—at the end of a long day, I'd gone and let the feel-good comedy make me feel good. There was nothing escapist about it; I left wanting to root for the people who made this film and all they represent. In what already is starting to feel like a down year for the festival, one has to hang onto those experiences for all they're worth.

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