Director Andrew Ahn’s sophomore feature, “Driveways,” is a small slice of life film that’s not exactly bursting at the seams with narrative ambition, but that’s partly what makes the movie such a humbling and heartwarming watch. The drama may not house a mind-bending narrative concept at its center, however, it is precisely the kind of neighborly hug many of us desperately need right now.
Starring the exceptionally talented Hong Chau (“Downsizing,” “Inherent Vice”), coming off her towering work playing Lady Trieu, the Smartest Woman In The World, on HBO’s “Watchmen,” Ahn’s second film follows a single mother, Kathy, who travels with her 8-year-old son, Cody (Lucas Jaye), to the home of her late sister, April. Capturing the ongoing frustration of the inability to tie up certain loose ends and get any kind of closure—both practically and emotionally—when someone passes on before setting their affairs in order, “Driveways” is a sobering story that never feels too somber. Its insular scale and phantom atmosphere feel all too apropos in a time when the most privileged in this country are selfishly bemoaning about their everyday living conditions.
Forget being stuck inside a home, Kathy and Cody end up living on her sister’s front porch. Upon arriving at her house—late at night, following a long road trip—the pair realize there is no electricity. They can’t get the power turned on because the house is still in April’s name, and they can’t afford to stay in a motel for days on end either. There is also the stench (and corpse) of the dead cat Cody discovers in the bathtub and the fact that her sister was a serious hoarder—every room in the house looking like an abandoned storage unit. “It’ll be like camping,” Kathy tells her son.
After spending over $100 on cleaning supplies, the duo starts cleaning up the clutter, soon befriending an elderly gentleman next door named Del (Brian Dennehy), a Korean War veteran who seems to spend his days on his lawnmower or sitting on the porch waiting for a friend whose memory is waning to forget to pick him up on the way to bingo. Del has lived alone ever since his wife died, and Cody and Kathy’s arrival provides him with a new window of companionship.
While the movie starts as Kathy’s story, Cody’s friendship with Del is its main focus. The young boy is mature and mindful for his age and the drama does an outstanding job evoking the ever-daunting nature of youth—that space between confidence and confusion where you’re still figuring out how you fit into a world when the people you care about seem to keep slipping out of it. Early in the film, two kids from the neighborhood ride up on bikes to introduce themselves to Cody. One of the first things they ask Cody is, “Do you know manga?” He thinks the “manga” they refer to is a person. They then ask him if he has cancer because he is wearing a facemask while hosing down furniture.
Though less of a narrative component than the relationships at its center, “Driveways” does a skillful job injecting issues of Asian American racism subtly into its fabric, pitting prejudicial micro-aggressions against human empathy and genuine trustworthiness. The movie never feels like its explicitly aiming for any kind of political message; it’s just part of the story of this particular American family and their particular experience. The film also presents a remarkably realistic bond between Kathy and Cody, never feeling like its straining for intimacy in the slightest—their relationship is flawed, refreshingly flippant, and just feels completely honest, tossing several Tiger Mom stereotypes out the door.
The big knock some viewers may have against “Driveways” is that it doesn’t have the strongest sense of storytelling progress outside character change, as there’s basically no plot to cause external conflict. However, that clearly isn’t Ahn’s agenda here. The movie does spend about 30 minutes (of its less than 90-minute run-time) setting up where the three main players stand, so it does feel padded, but you’d have to have a heart of stone to not want to reach out and hold hands with the characters by the end.
“Driveways” values painting a vivid portrait of three-dimensional people more than it does raising plot stakes, savoring the quiet moments – the ones we take for granted until after someone we care about is gone – over almost everything else. There’s a lovely little beat of cultural dissonance when Cody accompanies Del to the library; Cody goes to check out the manga section, so he can talk to the other kids about it, and the veteran asks if the characters are all girls. He doesn’t seem to have a malicious thought in his head when he asks the question, he’s just genuinely ignorant; so is Cody, the Japanese book of sequential art showing two different generations how we can learn strength and unity together through sympathy, care, and the pain of loss. [B]
“Driveways” arrives on VOD on May 7.