Perhaps the best compliment that you can give a narrative feature is to say that it feels like a documentary. Not to say the shot composition is uninspired and the subject dry, but it’s a way to spotlight just how you forget this is actually an actor reading written words, but instead, believe everything happening in front of you is real and true. Perhaps that’s the highest compliment a film like “Tendaberry” can receive. Filmmaker Haley Elizabeth Anderson has crafted a beautiful, honest, sometimes heartbreaking, but always real drama that will stay with you long after you watch it.
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Dakota (Kota Johan) is a young woman living in New York City, living her best life. However, this isn’t the life seen in a sitcom like “Friends,” where everyone works interesting jobs and lives in huge loft apartments. No, Dakota works at a convenience store that she doesn’t like, she lives in a very modest apartment with busted heat, and she barely has enough money to get by. But Dakota has her partner, Yuri (Yuri Pleskun), the love of her life. They often just lay together, cuddled in bed, smoking and laughing. Even though she doesn’t have much, Dakota is happy. Unfortunately, her lovely little life is upended when Yuri is called to go back to his home in Ukraine, where he has to care for his ill father, with no idea about when he’s going to return.
You might be able to piece together what comes next—Russia invades Ukraine, and suddenly, communication is completely cut off between Dakota and Yuri, with the young woman fearing the worst. And since this is (wonderfully written) reality and not a sitcom, there’s no time for lying around feeling sad about the situation. Dakota has to pick herself up and try to figure out how to live her life without the person she loves most.
While that might sound like the beginning of an awfully sad story, more than anything, “Tendaberry” is a celebration of life. It’s a story of a young woman discovering her independence and agency. And it’s a colorful, tender portrait of life in New York City right now. This is a film that feels very 2024, and that’s clearly the intention. In her directorial debut, Anderson structures the story in “Tendaberry” in a way where we come and go from Dakota’s life, catching up with her over the course of a year, seeing her grow and change, often in noticeable, physical ways.
And the most intriguing addition to the film is the poetic interstitials featuring found footage of a man living in New York City in the ‘80s. Dakota narrates the home video footage of this man living his life in the same but very different city decades prior. It smartly gives the audience an insight into Dakota’s internal monologue while also further placing “Tendaberry” in a very specific moment in time. Sometimes, this sort of mixed-media approach to filmmaking can feel forced, but Anderson weaves it in just enough, and in the perfect spots, that it offers a clear chapter break and almost a reset before we enter a new stage in Dakota’s life.
Without a doubt, however, the best part of “Tendaberry” is Kota Johan, playing a character who is so obviously written for her. You don’t have to meet Johan to know that the Dakota on screen is very similar to her actual self. This allows for the line between fiction and reality to blur. A tour de force performance from Johan only enhances that feeling, as there is absolutely no doubt the emotion you see from Johan is true. When she struggles at work or when she is scammed out of rent money, for example, your heart breaks for her. When Dakota is laying on the floor of her shitty apartment, watching footage from the Ukraine war, knowing full well that her love is dead, you just want to reach through the screen and give her a hug. It’s an absolutely memorable performance if you can even call it that. And it’s the heart and soul of this film.
With “Tendaberry,” Haley Elizabeth Anderson has gifted the world with a film that is so incredibly contemporary that it will stand the test of time. This is a movie that you can watch in 20 years and remember (not always with fondness) what life was like in the 2020s in New York City. But more than just a time capsule, “Tendaberry” is a poignant, touching slice-of-life portrait of the life of a young woman, led by a performance that will capture your heart. [A]
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