The film A Night in New York, the directorial debut of screenwriter Christy Hall, is released in Italian cinemas on Thursday 19 December. A film that is based entirely on the interaction, at first formal and hasty, then increasingly profound, between the two protagonists: Clark, a New York taxi driver played by Sean Pen and the woman he picks up, played by Dakota Johnson.

One Night in New York, the plot

During an ordinary night shift, a New York taxi driver on duty at JFK airport picks up a young woman who, returning from a trip, is headed to Manhattan. During the long night journey the two, who at the beginning exchange only the necessary words of pure courtesy and formality, as the road passes outside the cab window, manage to establish an increasingly deeper connection, initially exchanging opinions and advice and then end up telling each other pieces of life, secrets and raw truths that they struggle to tell even to themselves. When the taxi driver stops in front of the address the passenger gave him at the beginning of the journey, they both no longer feel like the same people they met by chance, by necessity, and for work, a few kilometers earlier.

A Night in New York as an actor in a film with a totally theatrical feel

“One Night in New York is a film all about words and interpretation, a true gem that shines thanks to the intensity and magnetism of the two protagonists and above all of the actors who play them: Sean Penn in the role of the rough but empathetic taxi driver Clark and Dakota Johnson, bruised girl still looking for her center. The structure of Christy Hall’s work is theatrical, but New York, which flows outside the windows of the taxi, is there to tell of an external world that waits for the girl to get out of the taxi which at a certain point becomes a confessional, but also a cocoon in which the confrontation with the unknown makes her strengthen her wings, to see what she will do with herself and therefore becomes an important part of the very subtext of this story.

Sean Penn and Dakota Johnson face each other in a dialogue that is sometimes soft, sometimes tense and tight, but with their profession they also give great weight to silences and glances. At the beginning we expect from the taxi driver Clark, from one moment to the next, a sudden turn of events, an oddity, perhaps even something terrible, but while the first awkward silence dissolves between the two, on his initiative, we understand that the director wants to remind us that interactions with other human beings, even with strangers who we almost no longer dare look in the face, can save us and give us a key and a measure of our own experiences.

Sean Penn draws a character that seems obvious at first, placed there only to stimulate the girl’s confessions and instead he manages to give him many different nuances and to make him, in the end, almost more of a ramshackle guardian angel from Queens than a casual confessor. If you can, watch this film in its original language. It’s really worth it.

Rating: 7

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