Sundance 2023: Sometimes I Think About Dying, The Pod Generation, birth/rebirth

It’s always tempting to look for themes at a festival like Sundance, one that has often reflected the anxieties of the nation with more urgency than some other events simply through the quick turnaround of the indie film scene. And so what do the first three films I screened at Sundance this year say about where we are in 2023? While remarkably different in tone, they all feel to me like stories of people trying to navigate new landscapes, whether it’s the quiet story of a woman trying to open up to the world or two tales of people essentially playing God. As we consider how much we’ve lost in the years between the last in-person Sundance festival in 2020 and this one three years later, I expect to see a lot of films about people trying to find a new road map or draw one of their own.

In a sense, that’s what Fran (Daisy Ridley) is doing in Rachel Lambert’s “Sometimes I Think About Dying,” a dramedy about a woman so quiet that one senses she often goes entire days without uttering a word. Fran lives a life of mundane repetition, following the same routines on her way to and from her job in an office on the coast of Oregon. Her co-workers are a little more outgoing, especially when there’s cake in the breakroom. In an interesting twist, Ridley and Lambert don’t lean into the tropes of depression. Fran seems numb, more introverted and quirky than sad—she’ll proudly tell a group of people that her favorite food is cottage cheese and not even realize that’s a bit of an odd choice—even if she does have daydreams about death.

When one of Fran’s co-workers retires, excitedly telling her co-workers about a cruise to Alaska and giving her office supplies, a new face enters Fran’s life in the form of Robert (Dave Merheje). Outgoing and friendly, he tries to crack Fran’s silence, asking her to go to the movies and out for pie afterward. Is Robert trying to date Fran? It’s not that clear-cut a situation—this is certainly not a traditional rom-com. It’s more just two very different people trying to get to know each other, and Fran realizing that perhaps she’d like to think about something other than dying.

Ridley gives a finely tuned performance in “Sometimes I Think About Dying,” never leaning into the awkwardness of this character that would have been a crutch for a lesser performer. Her smartest choices are in body language, whether it’s in Fran’s posture as she walks or the way she plays with her lip when she’s nervous. She knows it would be wrong for this to turn into a typical Hollywood production wherein a few encounters turn an introvert into an extrovert. She captures Fran’s awkward attempts at friendship in a way that feels carefully considered and true. She’s the reason to see it.

Sadly, the rest of the film doesn’t really hold up around her. It’s one of those projects that one can tell was based on a short or a play because it lacks the cinematic cohesion of a full-length feature. There’s just not enough to hold onto and Lambert too often seems content to repeat images and ideas without building any sort of momentum. Of course, this is a product of a story of a woman whose life is constantly on repeat and lacks all momentum, but that doesn’t make it narratively satisfying. Eventually, our mind starts to wander as much as Fran’s does at work.

A much different awakening occurs in Sophie Barthes’ “The Pod Generation,” a movie with fascinating ideas but too little POV to drive them home in an interesting way. Barthes raises some original questions about how much our artificial and natural lives intertwine as we push forward up the evolutionary ladder, but those questions never really shift or change after the first act. It’s a film that I kept wanting to build on its themes and bite into something instead of merely being content to smile.

Rachel (Emilia Clarke) and Aly (Chiwetel Ejiofor) are a New York couple in what feels like a very viable vision of the future. Tech has become a part of everyday life in every way. The couple’s needs are all met by an in-home A.I. that knows what they should eat, wear, and do that day. Work has become a privacy nightmare with productivity consistently monitored by intelligent machines. Even Rachel’s therapist isn’t human.

In this brave new world, technology has advanced so that couples can use detachable wombs to have children. Imagine the benefit to productivity! And control over nutrients and even the music that the baby hears in this electronic womb. At first, botanist Aly is against the entire thing, but he comes around eventually and joins this tech-heavy vision of parenthood, becoming even more involved than Rachel.