104 min | R | November 3, 2023 | Bleecker Street
A snowstorm strands two former lovers in a deserted airport overnight, decades after they split. They have one long night to relitigate everything. The chemistry is real. The reason for the movie is not.
Willa and Bill are former lovers who collide at a regional airport when a snowstorm grounds every flight. They have not seen each other in decades. Stuck overnight in an empty terminal, they pick at old wounds and unfinished arguments. The film is a two-hander built almost entirely from conversation between two people who once mattered to each other and now have to account for the years since. What it is really about is the way people narrate their own failures and assign the blame to whoever is standing in front of them.
Meg Ryan plays Willa as a free spirit who has hardened into something closer to evasion. She deflects every direct question with whimsy, and Ryan lets you see the practice behind it. David Duchovny plays Bill as a rigid man who measures his life in spreadsheets and regrets, and his dryness keeps the banter from going soft. The two trade barbs with a rhythm that suggests they have done this before. The chemistry is real, and the best moments come when neither character is performing for the other.
Ryan directs her first feature and adapts Steven Dietz’s play “Shooting Star” with Dietz and Kirk Lynn. The problem is that the staging never escapes the stage. The camera circles the same gates and benches and shuttered food court, and the airport announcements function as a forced third character that nudges the plot when the dialogue stalls. The single location was meant to feel like a pressure cooker. It feels like a set.
This is a pleasant minor thing. The talk is sharp and the two leads are easy to watch, and that carries you a fair distance before the thinness shows. Ryan wants to revive the talky adult romance, and she has the instincts for it. She does not have the material. The film coasts on charm and never finds a reason to exist beyond it.