Megan McLachlan continues her coverage of the 42nd Miami Film Festival with screenings of Cristina Costantini’s Sally and Violet Du Feng’s The Dating Game.
I love a good documentary! And I got to see two great ones, back to back, at Coral Gables Cinema on Day 3 of the Miami Film Festival.
Sally Offers a Provocative Portrait of an American Hero Who Never Wanted the Spotlight
Cristina Costantini’s Sally is part character study, part tribute, part love story. When the first American woman astronaut Sally Ride passed away from pancreatic cancer in 2012, everyone was surprised to learn that she lived with a female partner for 27 years — Tam O’Shaughnessy, her childhood friend and former professional tennis player.
“Tam was looking to tell Sally’s story,” said Costantini before presenting the film. “I don’t think she realized how much of her story we’d be interested in. The moment I met Tam, I knew this was the key to the film. Tam really wanted to tell her side of the story and be honest about who Sally actually was.”
Sally Ride was fearless in the face of heading into the unknown, but when it came to dealing with the things she knew to be true about herself, she struggled. She married a man she didn’t love in order to avoid confronting these truths, and sadly, never got to see herself as the LGBTQ icon she is today — although maybe she wouldn’t want the attention. She wanted to be seen as an astronaut first before anything else and walked away from the spotlight shortly after The Challenger disaster, as she lost all faith in the NASA program and seemingly the media.
Through archival footage, Dr. Ride faces an onslaught of intrusive questions, including whether she cries when she’s frustrated in space and whether she plans on being pregnant in the near future. You can see the exasperation on her face and hear it in her voice when she tells Jane Pauley her family plans are none of her business.
Sally seamlessly integrates archival footage and interviews to give it Ride’s voice. Maybe she never got to tell her coming out story herself, but this format might have been the way she’d want to do it, as a celebration of science and O’Shaughnessy, the two loves of her life.
Violet Du Feng’s Heartfelt The Dating Game Explores Confused Masculinity in the Face of a Shrinking Female Population in China
In a scene from Violet Du Feng’s documentary The Dating Game, one of the unlucky bachelors asks a woman if he can have her WeChat number at the urging of his dating coach, after being rejected by a slew of other women. When the woman shares her number with him, he thanks her and walks away — rather than continuing the conversation with the live girl in front of him. It’s a fascinating scene that says so much about the crisis of men, not just in Chongqing, but around the world. However, in China, men outnumber women due to the effects of the one child policy, abolished in 2015.
“I was really fascinated by the role of a dating coach,” said Du Feng in a Q&A following the screening. “They are the ones trying to bridge understanding between men and woman and finding a way to connect. That framework allowed me to interrogate the global landscape of how politics, culture, the economy, and technology affect how we connect with each other. Also, the unique situation in China now. Why have these men lost the confidence to connect with women?”
The dating coach in question, Hao, has his own problems. Even though he’s married, early on in the film his wife Wen (who’s also a dating coach) tells him she’s not sure their marriage will work based on his inauthentic approach toward her and his business. Hao provides his latest clients — Zhou, Li, and Wu — with all the wrong advice and props these men up through artificial social media photoshoots, makeovers, and pickup strategies. Rather than encouraging them to be themselves, he often asks them to pretend their someone else.
The Dating Game is a timely and important study of a specific group of Chinese men in a universal language. Du Feng skillfully tells their story with hilarity and heart, and by the end of the film, you’re rooting for them all to find love.
The Miami Film Festival continues through April 13.
