Sundance Review: Dakota Johnson and Sonoya Mizuno Are Electric in the Thoughtfully Grounded Am I OK?
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The post Sundance Review: Dakota Johnson and Sonoya Mizuno Are Electric in the Thoughtfully Grounded Am I OK? appeared first on Consequence.
The Pitch: Lucy (Dakota Johnson) and Jane (Sinoya Mizuno) aren’t just best friends — they’re Best Friends, capital letters. They speak their own language. The staff at their local diner knows them as a duo, and they know each other’s orders. It’s the kind of friendship where when one wants to have a sleepover, the boyfriend knows to just go home.
The bubble in which Lucy and Jane comfortably reside is burst from two ends. Jane is offered a promotion that would take her from their cozy corner of Los Angeles all the way to London. Meanwhile, Lucy is coming to terms with an attraction to women, something she’s never vocalized before — not even to Jane.
The nuances of every close female friendship are different, but what Lauren Pomerantz has so lovingly captured here in the screenplay is that some things about having a best friend are universal, too.
True Friend, Here to the End: Tig Notaro and Stephanie Allynne‘s joint directorial debut could have been great with many different actresses in the central roles, but Dakota Johnson and Sonoya Mizuno are magical together.
It’s Johnson who carries the emotional weight of the film as the awkward, introverted Lucy, a painter who has settled into a desk job at a posh LA massage studio. Johnson has long proven herself adept across genres and has generated plenty of buzz throughout this year’s Sundance alone. What she brings to AM I OK? is a believability that makes Lucy sympathetic, even to people who haven’t undergone the experiences we see onscreen.
The film focuses a bit more on Lucy than it does on Jane, but Mizuno is so authentic and so watchable as Jane (as opposed to the eeriness she had to bring to Ex Machina or the breeziness of Crazy Rich Asians) that the film effectively makes the case for putting her in any project she wants, forever.
Both Lucy and Jane are delightfully flawed, as is their friendship. The script finds great moments of tension and comedy in arguments about Jane’s impending move, squabbles about how exactly Lucy should lean into this new part of her identity, and Jane’s chaotic officemate (a fantastic Molly Gordon) — the scenes in which Jane forces Lucy and Gordon’s wonderfully insufferable Kat to exist in the same spaces will be painfully recognizable to many women.
Does She Listen to Girl In Red?: The “coming out” conversation lands relatively early in the film’s runtime, a neat 86 minutes. There’s something deeply refreshing about the way the moment is depicted — alternatingly emotional and silly, and almost anticlimactic. Lucy’s confession feels a bit like any other conversation between two best friends who process a new layer of their relationship, and that’s a good thing.
Furthermore, when so many queer films (particularly stories about women romantically involved with other women) feel doomed to end in tragedy, it’s a joy to watch a movie where that really isn’t the case. Coming out doesn’t immediately open the door to an easy, rainbow-tinted world for Lucy, but it also doesn’t damage her friendship with Jane.
In fact, her sexuality is hardly a factor in the arguments that arise between them — rather, it’s Jane’s urge to control so many details of Lucy’s life (including her attraction to women) that becomes the bigger issue. “I don’t want it to be like, a big thing,” Lucy whispers tearfully in that initial conversation. “I know no one cares, but.”
Okay, But Is She…A Friend of Phoebe Bridgers?: For Lucy, one impetus for opening the door to this new part of her identity is a coworker, a flirtatious masseuse named Brit (Kiersey Clemons). Conversations between the two offer a place for the movie to insightfully explore modern attitudes towards sexuality, that “no one cares” aspect Lucy mentions.
Brit is vague and coy with Lucy, making references to an unspecified “spectrum” while Lucy desperately googles things like, “Am I a lesbian?” (In one perfect moment, she’s hit with the iInternet’s reply — “Do you listen to Tegan and Sara?”)
The Verdict: It would have been easy for AM I OK? to either wrap things up perfectly or lean into a conclusively sad ending, but, true to the rest of the film, it doesn’t do either one. Instead, Lucy and Jane’s story feels appropriately open-ended, full of the question marks that pepper everyday life. What this movie offers is a refreshing, grounded take on a part of life that can be frightening and difficult, giving it the attention and care it deserves without veering into unnecessary sentimentality or aiming to be a tearjerker.
That being said, the movie doesn’t end on a cliffhanger, either. It leaves the viewer feeling like they just left a warm embrace from a friend, whose arms will be there again, even if we aren’t sure exactly when that will be.
Sundance Review: Dakota Johnson and Sonoya Mizuno Are Electric in the Thoughtfully Grounded Am I OK?
Mary Siroky
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