Plot lines about women wanting babies are as old as time, and can easily degenerate into sexist tropes. Daisy’s desire to have a kid doesn’t define her. Instead, over the course of the film, her desire to become a mother becomes a metaphor for the creative experience.
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A bald, age-speckled head rises from between Daisy’s legs. “It’s one of those ‘now or never’ situations,” the OB/Gyn tells the almost-40-year-old high school librarian.
Daisy wants a baby. She has tender spot for kids – even high school kids. But her biological clock isn’t the only issue. There’s a strained romance, a buttinsky mother, and the pressures of working in public education.
Days of Daisy, written by Paul Petersen and Alexander Jeffery in collaboration with Jency Griffin Hogan, had its world premiere in late June at the Last Best Film Festival in Los Angeles. The feature length narrative is produced by Hogan Productions and Bespoke Works, LLC.
After that poignant and promising opening scene, things stiffen a bit, as if filming began before the actors finished zipping up their character suits. Hang in there … they wriggle in.
I plucked Daisy from the festival circuit for the shallowest of reasons: the movie poster, a watercolor ensemble straight out of the 1960s, caught my eye. Also, the storyline didn’t fit into two tired indie niches I’ve seen a lot of lately: coming of age and dealing with death. Daisy’s days are my days, somewhere between beer pong and assisted living.
The screenplay, while it pokes through the dialogue at times, is well woven. I searched IMDB and couldn’t find previous screenwriting credits for Jeffrey or Peterson, so I dug deeper. Jeffrey and Peterson were the filmmakers behind the award-winning short film The Bespoke Tailoring of Mr. Bellamy http://bespokeworksllc.com/, among other sensitive short films. Jency Griffin Hogan, well known in Louisiana film circles (Dallas Buyers Club, Blaze), plays the lead. Hogan has experience as an actor, director, producer, and writer. She was a collaborator and producer for this project as well.
Plot lines about women wanting babies are as old as time, and can easily degenerate into sexist tropes. Daisy’s desire to have a kid doesn’t define her. Instead, over the course of the film, her desire to become a mother becomes a metaphor for the creative experience.
Daisy’s struggle for direction and meaning is treated with a light hand in this romantic dramedy, where the lead character explores her needs with a shrug, a smirk, and finally, a smile. Hogan, lanky and likable, radiates an easy warmth. The camera doesn’t judge – but you can’t say the same thing for Daisy’s mother Camille, played by Cathie Choppin.
Daisy’s main love interest, Jack, is a struggling artist played by Bryan Langlitz (House of Cards, Orange Is the New Black). There’s also a boyfriend, Stanley (Rex Austin Barrow), with whom Daisy shares intimacy but no chemistry, and a cloyingly naive Christian computer dude, a spot-on comic performance by Chris Alan Evans.
Bill Martin Williams (The Thing about Pam, NCIS, Requiems) plays Daisy’s father, Frank. Frank, the principal at the high school where Daisy works, is good at sports and math, explaining to his daughter why the football team gets new jerseys while the sparsely attended high school art class is forced to salvage materials from a trash can.
Frank is the best kind of dad: he lets Daisy flail a little. Frank doesn’t pivot when subjects get tough, and best of all, he hugs without prodding.
Daisy’s mother, Camille, on the other hand, throws her daughter conditional buoys and occasional lead weights. Daisy offers the audience a lesson in acceptance, deflecting her mother’s cringeworthy attitude without drama. There’s one nasty moment where Camille morphs out of character into downright cruelty; especially because Choppin plays Camille with such verve, that scene undercuts the fragile dynamic between mother and daughter.
The ensemble cast offers solid performances, with special kudos to writer/actor Sybil Rosen, who plays a high school art teacher on the verge of a nervous breakdown. That small role, pivotal to the plot line, could have dragged the story in a bleak direction, but Rosen, who wrote for the daytime drama Guiding Light, kept her performance on the edge of dark comedy.
Texas musician Walker Lukens wrote and performed the original music for Days of Daisy. There is … a lot of music. Sometimes it’s sensitive, sometimes the consistent bass beat is a bit much. There are a few ballads, though, that could stand on their merit. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Lukens doing more work with film projects in the future.
Mackenzie Griffin’s costume design adds nicely to the film’s sorta-vintage aura. The wardrobe choices for the lead role communicate relationships between Daisy and the other characters in particular scenes, from the frumpy housekeeper attire worn in a scene with her mother to the sexy yellow sweater featured in the movie poster.
Too often, indie films look better as blossoms than full blooms. Not so with Days of Daisy. Thanks to well-written dialogue and a bit of brave editing, characters don’t force, metaphors are not fried and battered, and the ending is satisfying without being wrapped up with a floppy bow.
One very weird aside: IMDB lists the movie not as Days of Daisy, but under the title Daisy and Smiling Jack; sometime before release, the title of the project (and, thank goodness, the movie poster) was changed. The filmmakers’ late flip-flop is a tad unprofessional, but the new title better reflects the focus of the film.
Days of Daisy is a sweet indie film that doesn’t wield a ball peen hammer, and it doesn’t jerk tears. It’s a small movie that makes filmgoers root for its creative team. Days of Daisy is also a testament to regional – and not necessarily youthful – talent. Much of the cast and crew have ties to the American South, particularly Louisiana, where Days of Daisy was filmed. I can’t help but wonder if this project might be a metaphor for Hogan’s successful regional career. With a lot of filmmaking centered in the Atlanta area, and the increasing appetite our aging population has for mature entertainment, Hogan may become a more familiar face, in front of and behind the camera.
