Blu-ray Review: Greg Mottola’s The Daytrippers on the Criterion Collection

When the Criterion Collection announced that their much-anticipated 1,000th release would be a mammoth box set devoted to the schlocky rock ‘em-sock ‘em pleasures of the Godzilla franchise, it turned a few heads in the cinephile community. Did these effects-driven giant-fighting-monster films really deserve to rub shoulders with the likes of Yasujirō Ozu and Rainer Werner Fassbinder in home video’s premier compendium of international art cinema? If this unexpected choice was, in part, an acknowledgement of the exhilarating breadth and depth of cinematic history, Criterion really drives the point home with its follow-up release—spine number 1001—a film that could scarcely be more different from the legendary kaiju series if it tried: Greg Mottola’s The Daytrippers, an under-seen, micro-budgeted American indie whose action takes place, in significant part, inside a dumpy wood-paneled station wagon.

That vehicular signifier of suburban complacency looks like an alien spaceship as it lumbers its way through the crowded streets of Manhattan. Its passengers are a colorful but authentically kooky family of Long Island neurotics who’ve made the trek into the city to investigate a mysterious love letter discovered by Eliza (Hope Davis) in her bedroom the morning after a bout of tender lovemaking with her husband, Louis (Stanley Tucci). Eliza’s overbearing mother, Rita (Anne Meara), is sure that there’s a reasonable explanation for the note, while her sister, Jo (Parker Posey), and her pretentious boyfriend, Carl (Liev Schreiber), are just excited at the opportunity to play amateur detective. The long-suffering family patriarch, Jim (Pat McNamara), on the other hand, is the reluctant chauffeur for the day.

While The Daytrippers hooks its narrative momentum to the investigation into Louis’s suspected infidelity generates, it’s the complex and often hilarious relationship between Eliza’s family members that forms the film’s emotional core. With deft subtlety, Mottola gradually reveals the family’s troublesome dynamics and submerged resentments, much of which stems from Rita’s tendency to favor the men in her daughters’ lives over her offspring. Nowhere is this more evident than in her fawning affection for Carl. Rita beams with quasi-maternal pride as he delivers a long-winded synopsis of his novel—a pretentious parable about a man with a dog’s head—over the course of the entire day. Meanwhile, Jo grows increasingly disgusted both with Carl’s self-important political pronouncements in favor of a benevolent aristocracy and with her mother’s obsequiousness in his presence.

The cast is uniformly delightful, embodying their characters’ flaws and apprehensions while embracing the film’s breezily discursive tone. Schreiber steals the show, imbuing Carl’s high-flown sermonizing with a genuine sense of kindliness: Carl may be full of himself, but in Schreiber’s hands, we can’t help but like him. Davis and Posey embody very different women who nevertheless share a deep, unbreakable bond: their mutual bemusement at their parents. But Meara’s performance forms the real prickly, complicated heart of The Daytrippers, a seemingly loving, if slightly dotty, matriarch whose outward kindliness masks a prickliness that, at times, even turns to unwitting cruelty toward Eliza and Jo.

There are no truly “big” moments in the film until the final 10 minutes or so. Until then, Mottola favors the accumulation of small, acutely observed details: Jim’s vexed eyerolls, which suggest a lifetime of quiet torment; Jo stripping off her many layers of outerwear in a hallway before strutting into a fancy literary soiree, clearly looking to find someone to talk to other than Carl; and Carl’s constant eating and frequent need to urinate, which belie the goofy, anxious naivete underlying his grandiose posturing. These moments, without big speeches or contrived revelations, tell us so much about the characters’ neuroses and conflicting desires.

Except, that is, for the film’s big reveal about Louis’s affair. It turns out Louis isn’t only cheating on Eliza, he’s doing so with a man. The film’s treatment of this ostensible twist isn’t exactly homophobic; when Eliza catches Louis making out with the man who wrote him the intense love note, it’s a moment of pure bliss for Louis. But the film evinces the same dated anxiety about queerness as other ’90s comedies, like Chasing Amy. The film is really only interested in gayness as it affects straight relationships. And yet, the obvious shame in Louis’s eyes when Eliza interrogates him about his feelings suggests a gut-wrenching well of self-doubt that lingers with us even as the film shifts focus back to Eliza and her family.

Ultimately, the film isn’t fundamentally about Louis’s infidelities at all. Nor is it about Jo’s dawning realization that her boyfriend is a bit of a putz. Rather, at its heart, The Daytrippers is about both sisters’ collective recognition that they deserve better than what their overbearing mother chooses for them. For Rita, a woman without a man is essentially worthless—an incomplete person. But Eliza and Jo come to understand that the men in their lives aren’t serving their needs, that they would be better off uniting with one another to face life on their own terms rather than their mothers’. Appropriately, this film of crowded ensemble scenes ends with a long shot of Eliza and Jo walking away from their family arm in arm, finally understanding that, in the end, all they really need is each other.

Image/Sound

The Daytrippers’s charm owes in no small part to its scrappy 16mm cinematography, which has been restored here in 4K resolution from the original negatives. The result cleans up imperfections such as dirt and scratches while preserving the pleasantly grainy texture of the film elements. The uncompressed stereo soundtrack is crystal clear, balancing the talky dialogue with the groovy bossa nova music interspersed throughout the film. Even in relatively noisy party scenes, the characters’ lines are always easily heard.

Extras

Producer Steven Soderbergh, who put up much of the film’s budget, serves as a kind of MC for the disc’s audio commentary, interviewing director Greg Mottola and editor Anne McCabe about the film’s ramshackle production. Criterion has also produced some amiable interview segments between Mottola and most of the principal cast (Parker Posey, Liev Schreiber, and Campbell Scott in one segment and Hope Davis in another). The disc also includes Mottola’s 1985 short The Hatbox, though unfortunately not his 1988 short Swingin’ in the Painter’s Room, which is mentioned in some of the supplementary materials and even excerpted during one of the interviews. Critic Emily Nussbaum provides an appreciative essay, though the highlight of the booklet is undoubtedly R. Kikuo Johnson’s Daniel Clowes-style comic illustrations, which perfectly capture the dryly comic spirit of the film.

Overall

Criterion’s superb presentation lends this modest little film some well-deserved prestige.