Sundance Movie Review: 'Drift' Is A Touching Tale Of Friendship After Tragedy
Jan. 28 (UPI) - ' Drift,' which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, is a touching story of friendship born of tragic circumstances. Cynthia Erivo and Alia Shawkat give heartfelt performances as women from diverse and connected backgrounds.
Jacqueline (Erivo) was living homeless on a Greek island. The early parts of Drift show him making his bed with sandbags, subsisting on sugar packets, and giving foot massages to tourists on the beach to buy more food.
Flashbacks show Jacqueline living a much more luxurious life in Liberia. He travels with Helen (Honor Swinton Byrne), whom we apparently never see again, and flashbacks gradually explain how Jacqueline ended up in Greece.
This time, Jacqueline meets Callie (Shawkat) who is touring historic sites. Callie liked to chat as the tourists continued on their way.
Callie helps Jacqueline deal with a female emergency, but when she offers to take Jacqueline out to dinner, Jacqueline politely declines. However, they went further.
Callie and Jacqueline form a wonderful friendship based on kindness. Callie could do her part for Jacqueline, and she did.
This contrasts sharply with the restaurant manager entering when Jacqueline is seen stealing leftovers from an empty table.
Sure, a restaurant can't keep everyone seated, but that makes the difference between people who contribute and those who get in the way. Jacqueline answered as best she could.
Suffice it to say, the new flashback creates something traumatic. It is handled sensibly and addresses the trauma that many people in Africa and elsewhere have actually experienced.
Meeting Callie doesn't help, and it shouldn't. Hopefully viewers can become sympathetic after dating Jacqueline for 90 minutes. So when they meet someone in need, they can be more like Callie.
People in Jacqueline's situation cannot go home after the 90-minute credits. A little kindness can make all the difference in their day.
Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a Los Angeles-based UPI entertainment writer. He's been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012. Learn more about his work at Entertainment.
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