In a peculiar, and potentially system-disrupting era, in which it seems only the most blockbustery intellectual property (RE: "Spider-Man" and subsidiaries) successfully lures an audience back from the comfort of their living rooms to movie theaters, it seems sadly fitting that this year's edition of the world's most prominent showcase of independent film has reluctantly been forced to go entirely virtual.
When word came out from the Sundance Institute a few weeks ago, I was struck, again, in two places at once: One the one hand, it's vastly cheaper, easier, and less demanding to stay home in Philadelphia to watch my allotted assortment of features; on the other, how much everyone loses without the atmosphere, conviviality, and sense of camaraderie by not going into the elevated climes of Park City.
Toward the end of last year, there was a quick email thread among the critics with whom I normally spend the frigid Sundance week in a shared townhouse. It was pretty clear none of us were planning to actually attend in person this year, anyway (too risky, of course), but there was lamentation about the loss of that communal experience -- among other things, attending a festival with a bevy of other critics gives you an excellent sense of what else you still need to see.
Still, this is the Sundance we've got in 2022. An inauspicious way to begin the festival circuit in the new year, though it might be, we have no choice but to make the best of it. Not all is lost, of course, as there's still a robust lineup of culturally representational films to pour over. Here are some of the ones I'm most intrigued by, in alphabetical order.
"Am I OK?": A sweet-sounding, love story of sorts from Stephanie Allynne and Tig Notaro, the latter of whom is best known for her deeply affecting stand-up, which stars Dakota Johnson (on a major roll with, er, roles) and Sonoya Mizuno as best friends who share almost everything except the truth about their relationship. In the wrong hands, it could be cloying, but my confidence in both Notaro and Johnson (who co-produced) is such that I'm still excited for it.
"Cha Cha Real Smooth": There wasn't a huge number of people who saw Cooper Raiff's surprisingly strong college comedy "S***house" a couple of years back, but it was a collegiate coming-of-age story that captured a veritable feeling of genuine angst, among all the jokes. His new film takes the next logical step, focusing on a recent graduate (Raiff) suddenly back at home with little direction, who takes on a gig as an event enhancer for bar and bat mitzvahs, meeting a young mother (Dakota Johnson, again) in the process.
"Fire of Love": There are strong pitch lines for a documentary, and then there's this: A loving, married pair of French volcanologists, who dedicated their lives to documenting eruptions and their aftermath, are themselves killed in a volcanic explosion in 1991, but not before creating a legacy of imagery and data that have influenced the field ever since. Sara Dosa collects and collates some of the groundbreaking couple's work to produce an evocation of their passions, both for each other, and the volcanoes that ultimately killed them.
"Happening": One of the few films at Sundance to have already screened at a previous festival (Venice, where it won the prestigious Golden Lion), Audrey Diwan's film, set in early '60s France, concerns a young woman who discovers to her horror that she's become with child, and seeks to terminate the pregnancy by any means necessary, in order to fulfill the dreams she has for herself. As with several other films in this year's lineup, all too topically relevant in an age in which women's reproductive rights are under massive attack in this country.
"The Janes": Speaking of which, Tia Lessin and Emma Pildes' film documents an underground female group in early '70s Chicago who created a clandestine network of willing health care providers for women seeking to end a pregnancy. Arrested in 1972, the women, who dubbed themselves "Janes" in order to keep their identities hidden, speak about their ordeal in the cultural battleground, then and now.
"Master": At a prestigious college somewhere in New England, three Black women -- one (played by the resplendent Regina Hall), a dean; one (Amber Gray), a professor of literature; and the other (Zoe Renee), an incoming freshman -- each experience a side of the school, buried deep behind the manicured lawns and hedges of the campus, that speaks to the systemic horror of its sordid racial history. Described as a blend of "horror ... thriller... and social critique," Mariama Diallo's debut promises a richly unsettling experience.
"Nothing Compares": Sinead O'Connor has ever been a controversial figure, a small woman in Doc Martens, confronting the male patriarchy (and, famously, the Catholic Church) at every turn. But in Kathryn Ferguson's documentary about the talented, troubled singer, the focus is on her early days in the late '80s and '90s, trying to make it as a musician in a completely male-dominated industry, until becoming herself an icon of resolution and chaotic bravery.
"Resurrection": The redoubtable Rebecca Hall, fresh off her sterling directorial debut, "Passing," returns to the other side of the screen to play a woman with a grown daughter, and a mysterious and traumatized past, who suddenly begins to encounter the man (Tim Roth) who appears to be the key to her suffering. Hall, who was in the Sundance horror flick "The Night House" back in 2019, returns to the festival with a new scary offering.
"Something in the Dirt": Directors Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson have made a solid career out of taking obvious-sounding concepts (a movie about a cult, say; or time travel) and doing something new and interesting with them. Their new film stars themselves, as a pair of oddballs who meet in an L.A. apartment building, and discover something that they believe offers definitive proof of the paranormal. It could be banal, but it generally doesn't pay to bet against them.
"You Won't Be Alone": Sundance has become well-known as an incubator of "elevated" horror films (many of which, including "The Babadook," "The Witch," and "Hereditary," are name dropped in the last Scream movie). This year's festival features several possible entries into their canon of terror, but this one, from first-time director Goran Stolevski, about a young woman (Noomi Repace), in 19th-century Macedonia, taken off by a malevolent spirit and turned into a shape-shifting witch, sounds like a cross between "Under the Skin" and "A Ghost Story," and I am 100% there for it.