I’m Fine (Thanks for Asking)

We meet Dan­ny (Kel­ley Kali) and her inquis­i­tive, bub­bly daugh­ter Wes (Wes­ley Moss) cooped up in the sti­fling heat of a cheap tent that has been erect­ed just far enough from the high­way to keep its loca­tion dis­crete. Dan­ny is cul­ti­vat­ing a benign ruse in telling her dar­ling daugh­ter that they’re on hol­i­day – it’s an adven­ture! The grim real­i­ty is that, when her hus­band sud­den­ly died dur­ing the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic, he left them with no finan­cial pro­vi­sion – not out of spite, more that he gen­uine­ly didn’t believe his time would be up so soon.

The sim­ple set-up of Kali and Angelique Molina’s well-inten­tioned if slight and deriv­a­tive debut fea­ture sees Dan­ny drop­ping off Wes at a friend’s house as she (lit­er­al­ly) puts her skates on with the aim of rak­ing in enough mon­ey across a sin­gle day to make the required deposit to secure a local hous­ing unit. All this takes in cus­tomised hair-braid­ing, food deliv­ery, and vis­its to pawn shops and friends who might be able to spare the odd buck. All the while, she tries to keep her spir­its high as the annoy­ances, microag­gres­sions and moral temp­ta­tions pile up among her friends and clientele.

The title, I’m Fine (Thanks for Ask­ing), is a ref­er­ence to Danny’s flus­tered mind­set where she’s being forced to be pleas­ant to peo­ple while under great emo­tion­al duress. The way Kali shades the char­ac­ter makes it easy to root for her, and her sense of dri­ve and deter­mi­na­tion is with­out reproach. Although, there are a cou­ple of scenes where she does let her guard down and strays from the path (a quick joint ends up plac­ing a major down­er on the day), and these moments feel too stud­ied and con­trived to real­ly hit home, like char­ac­ter flaws for the sake of them.

The indi­vid­ual inter­ac­tions work well, yet they all add up to a film that isn’t doing very much that even the most casu­al of movie­go­er won’t have seen before. The race against the clock; the want­i­ng to do right by her daugh­ter; the lack of empa­thy for those who are also in a sim­i­lar boat; the ghost of the depart­ed hus­band – all of this is deliv­ered with a sick­ly strain of sen­ti­men­tal­ism that always comes across as the eas­i­est way out of a dra­mat­ic situation.

Aes­thet­i­cal­ly, it does what it needs to do, with the cold dig­i­tal pho­tog­ra­phy instant­ly cre­at­ing a visu­al short­hand for that peri­od of post-pan­dem­ic malaise, cap­tur­ing the weird, almost apoc­a­lyp­tic des­o­la­tion of a some­what non-descript LA sub­urb. The film sore­ly lacks for sur­prise or ten­sion, even while it does offer a lik­ably earnest sur­vey of the eco­nom­ic hole that many found them­selves in while the world got sick.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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