![]() Instead of ruminating on loss, I’m Fine allows grief to linger in the background, coming to a head when Danny sacrifices her late husband’s ring as a last-ditch effort to make the security deposit. This brief inaccuracy elevates its anxiety, but also communicates Danny’s increasing desperation. Here, it could almost be viewed through the lens of the Before Time - until a pandemic-trained brain sees Danny speaking to relative strangers with her mask dangling at her ear. While its occasional comedic antics exist in the shadow of distress, the film’s genuine humor (free from COVID jests) and saturated aesthetic soften the stark situation. Roller skating through palm tree-laden Los Angeles, Danny tries to round up hair clients, deliver food through a DoorDash-esque company, and pawn the few items she has. The camera follows Danny through a single day, as she attempts to earn the last couple hundred dollars to secure housing for her and her daughter by the end of the day, spiraling into an exhausting time crunch. (Kalli took the Special Jury Recognition for Multi-hyphenate Storyteller in this year's SXSW Film Grand Jury awards.) She tells Wesley they’re camping, and hides her houseless life from everyone she knows. In addition to producing, Kali also stars as Danny, a recently widowed mother who lost her home amid the pandemic and now lives with her daughter, Wes (Wesley Moss), in a tent pitched off the side of a road. Funded by stimulus checks, it’s a COVID-era creation, through and through, but its complete avoidance of directly addressing the pandemic offers a breath of fresh air. ![]() Masks abound in Kelley Kali and Angelica Molina’s written and directorial feature film collaboration, I’m Fine (Thanks For Asking). Music by Erick Del Aguila and Jarrett Woo adds a counterpoint to her building worry.Kelley Kali as widowed mother Danny in I'm Fine (Thanks for Asking) A cleverly shot, weed-induced sequence provides a smartly imagined pause in Danny’s harried saga. Instead, the shop owner (played with an undercurrent of kindness by Ira Scipio) makes an offer on Danny’s wedding band.īrooklynn Marie provides a spirited respite as Kali’s blunt friend, who offers a thick blunt and plenty of advice. The lesson continues when Danny stops by a barber shop that doubles as a pawn shop, hoping to hawk a bracelet. When one of Danny’s clients comes up short, it’s not karma so much as a sharp insight into Pandemic Econ 101. (Still does.) Their benevolence infuses “I’m Fine.”ĭanny’s needs are dire, but her babysitter (Dominique Molina) needs her money, too. Kali - winner of a 2018 Student Academy Award for her short “Lalo’s House,” about two Haitian sisters abducted into a human trafficking ring - and Molina seem genuinely moved by the pressures the pandemic exerted on folks. ![]() The directors, their crew and ensemble do sweet work capturing the weight of a moment that has most everyone stretched thin. Cinematographer Becky BaiHui Chen keeps things fluid and brightly hued. Kali has an awareness of what can-do desperation looks like, while providing her character some serious skate skills. When that isn’t as gainful as she needs it to be, she delivers food for a Door Dash-style app. Only, instead of ha-ha challenges, Danny encounters the poignant, the frustrating, even the perilous.įirst, she tracks down her hair-braiding clients - doing their plaits in backyards, masks on. “I’m Fine” teases the structure of comedies in which something must be achieved in too short a span. Once Danny they emerge from the field where their tent is hidden and Danny drops Wes off at the sitter’s, she is off and skating. ![]() ![]() They’re unhoused and with that comes stress and no small measure of shame. ![]()
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