I Love You Daddy Tiff

I Love You Daddy Tiff
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The comedian's 'secret' project is a Woody Allen-style feature about the struggles of parenthood
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The comedian's 'secret' project is a Woody Allen-style feature about the struggles of parenthood
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Dir: Louis C.K., 120 mins, starring Louis C.K., Chloë Grace Moretz, Charlie Day, Edie Falco
So fervent is social media these days that it’s virtually impossible to watch a film without knowing anything about it, the flurry of every new trailer - laden with spoilers - unwittingly diminishing its surprises. Only last year did two ‘secret’ films wave its fingers in the face of an obstinate Hollywood by essentially appearing out of nowhere ( 10 Cloverfield Lane and Blair Witch ) and now another such film has manifested; not a money-making horror sequel, however, but I Love You, Daddy - a black-and-white 35mm ode to parenthood from revered comedian Louis C.K..
Made on a shoestring budget amassed from the money you gave him buying web series Horace and Pete , one-man bandwagon C.K. serves as I Love You, Daddy ’s writer, director, star, editor and producer. He plays Glen Topher, a successful TV writer under pressure to pen another hit from his weary production manager (Edie Falco), a small worry next to the burgeoning friendship between his 17-year-old daughter China (Chloë Grace Moretz) and John Malkovich’s elder film director with a self-confessed interest in young girls. Other characters flitting into Glen's life are his foul-mouthed ex-wife (Helen Hunt) and girlfriend (Pamela Adlon) as well as ebullient best pal Ralph ( It’s Always Sunny ’s Charlie Day swapping Philadelphia for New York).
As ever, C.K. here draws upon what he knows most about - insecurity in his artistry, pissing off every woman he comes into contact with - and as a starting point, it works. The embellishment of these situations is when the film flies with C.K’s wry concern shining no more than in the scenes opposite his scantily-clad daughter who spends her days holed up in his penthouse. “I love you, daddy,” she coos after requesting to borrow his private jet to go to Florida for the weekend. A teenage daughter telling her father she loves him? He must be doing something wrong, Adlon's ex-girlfriend tells him with C.K. deploying dejected bewilderment - his unofficial trademark - in several standout scenes (boy, are there many).
C.K. is a figure whose personal life has been scrutinised no more than by himself on stage at his own comedy shows and he hasn’t stopped with I Love You, Daddy . One particular scene sees Glen reproaching a pregnant Hollywood actress (Rose Byrne) he’s considering for a lead role in his forthcoming new series about nurses (“What the hell do you know about nurses?” Falco barks incredulously in an early scene which could be its greatest). She brings up his past as an adulterer, a tortured Glen arguing about her failing to know the facts - a potential nod to the allegations C.K. himself has faced in the past. That the same scene sees him making similar judgements about Malkovich’s character thankfully keeps the film from slipping into self-knowing reproach.
I Love You, Daddy isn’t designed to turn non-committal folk into C.K. fans but his unstructured, often meandering artistry - an honest riff on Woody Allen - is a present breath of fresh air.
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© The Film Stage, L.L.C. (2008-2022)
Introducing a screening of I Love You, Daddy at TIFF, director/writer/producer/star Louis C.K. was asked about his motivation for making the film, and stated simply that he has an affinity for “pissing on electric fences.” Provocation for its own sake unquestionably propels the movie. It takes tangible glee in making the audience uncomfortable, asking them pointed questions, and arising their ire, and does so without offering any answers or definitive opinions on the issues in question. This is fantastic if one wants to drum up internet chatter for a few days (C.K. is good at this, being a darling of the “Peak TV” era), but ruinous if one wants a work that can stand on its own long after the social media outrage/defenses/backlash/backlash-to-the-backlash cycle dies down.
The strongest message or stance a viewer can glean from the film is that parents must be actively and consistently involved with their children’s lives, lest they find said children threatening to enter adulthood woefully unprepared. This is a tremendous “no duh” of an assertion, and while C.K. may get praise for delivering homilies about such obvious morality in his stand-up, it’s harder to pull off with a movie. In any case, the lack of such fortitude in lead character Glen Topher (C.K.) means that he abruptly finds that his teenage daughter China (Chloë Grace Moretz) is courting the affections of his artistic idol, movie director Leslie Goodwin (John Malkovich). A good deal of discussion amongst various characters ensues – the kind of extensive discussion which is fine in 20-minute blocks but limply stretches out at two hours.
Leslie is very, very obviously Woody Allen. Beyond the parallels in their respective reputations (when Leslie is first glimpsed, someone instantly blurts “Didn’t he molest that girl?”), the film is deliberately shot in black-and-white homage to Manhattan – which, remember, is about Allen’s self-insert character in a relationship with a 17-year-old. I Love You, Daddy is C.K.’s riff on the allegations against that director (and his onetime collaborator) specifically, as well as amorous liaisons between old men and young girls more generally. The parable is not subtle, to the point where the audience’s meta knowledge of the real events being referenced is likely part of C.K.’s extended troll of them.
In fact, the most interest that can be gleaned from the film is wondering about how much self-awareness is in play – so much so that a viewer might not just wonder how much it’s toying with them, but also how much it knows that we know that it knows, and even further complications of paratextual ponderings. For example, China is introduced slinking around Glen’s apartment in a bikini. The camera blithely ogles her, but the clear Lolita reference paired with the over-the-top thirst makes the wink to the viewer evident. But of course, even ironically leering at an underage girl is still leering. But the movie may be aware of that , too – and so could it then be said to also be commenting on ironic objectification? Maybe. Or maybe C.K. is just pissing on an electric fence, deliberately throwing out stuff he knows will get the clickbait flowing.
There’s no better example of this than an extended argument between Glen and his quasi-girlfriend Grace (Rose Byrne). There’s much discussion around the logic (or lack thereof) behind age of consent laws and the sexual agency of teenagers, all of which adds up to not much of anything. Of course real-life arguments rarely build to any coherent victory or agreement. But this is a film which otherwise pay stylistic lip service to Old Hollywood artifice, so this smacks of C.K. sneaking in some stand-up material he may feel he otherwise couldn’t get away with by putting arguments against age of consent laws in the mouth of a woman. It’s not as if a subject should be somehow off-limits to anyone to talk about, but any recipient of such talk is fully within both their own rights and senses to question why exactly someone may argue so vociferously about one particular subject.
And talk is all I Love You, Daddy offers. C.K. has proven to be one of TV’s best directors with Louie and Horace and Pete , but his adept camera work is absent here. Worse is the total absence of one of his greatest strengths: his willingness to use silence at length for both dramatic and comedic heft. Nothing here feels motivated; the movie uses a big orchestral score because the old movies did, it’s in black and white because Manhattan was, it was shot on 35mm because “it looks good” (C.K.’s words from the Q&A after the screening I attended). As a thinkpiece generator, it is absolutely spectacular – by every other metric, it’s a failure.
I Love You, Daddy premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.

TIFF 2017: "I Love You, Daddy," "Hostiles," "Professor Marston and the Wonder Women," "Plonger"

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Let’s get a few things out of the way with regards to Louis C.K.’s new feature “I Love You, Daddy” : Photographed by longtime collaborator Paul Koestner on black-and-white film, “I Love You, Daddy” is a formal allusion/response to Woody Allen ’s “ Manhattan ,” and to a lesser extent “ Crimes and Misdemeanors .” It centers on a successful TV creator (played by C.K.) who struggles when his 17-year-old daughter ( Chloë Grace Moretz ) begins to see his 68-year-old idol ( John Malkovich ), an acclaimed writer/director who has a predilection for young girls and has been accused of molestation. Malkovich’s character is designed to recall Allen specifically, or is at the very least a composite of other successful men with, shall we say, controversial personal lives. The film’s narrative is further problematized by rumors of C.K.’s own sexual impropriety, as its recurring dialectic about the separation of art/artist, the limitations of plausible deniability, and the inherently unknowable nature of individuals actively forces the audiences to consider these extratextual ideas.
If this scans to you as an a priori disreputable subject for a film, I’m not sure if I have a great argument against that. For what it’s worth, C.K. doesn’t treat the subject glibly. He doesn’t posit easy or shallow answers to the film’s primary questions and its central issues are never resolved. They’re just further complicated and debated again and again. Suffice it to say, “I Love You, Daddy” is, by design, a profoundly uncomfortable film. During the TIFF screening I attended, there were moments when you could feel the air get sucked out of the room and hear actual seat squirming. Mileage will inevitably vary if that discomfort is justified by the film’s quality, and if this section of the dispatch reads at all wishy-washy, it’s because I’m still grappling with that question as well.
C.K.’s entire career has been predicated upon a somewhat confrontational approach; his stand-up and his TV shows frequently frame similarly challenging questions in a comedic light and then examine their various facets. Though the premise of “I Love You, Daddy” will be undeniably and appropriately read as a provocation, it ultimately tries to get across two simple, non-provocative ideas: 1) “difficult” conversations immediately become less difficult when they’re no longer an abstraction; and 2) no one will ever know the full truth about anybody, so all we’re left with are assumptions and limited information. In the film, C.K.’s character Glen Topher and his daughter, China, spot Malkovich’s Lesley Graham at a glitzy party in the Hamptons. China immediately repulses and calls him a child molester, but Topher chastises her, saying that those are just rumors and that she doesn’t actually know him. However, Topher quickly becomes horrified when China and Graham start hanging out and all talk about “rumors” goes straight out the window. Neither Topher nor China really knows the full truth about Graham, and yet when personal stakes contextualize the immediate situation, the truth becomes irrelevant to both of them.
“I Love You, Daddy” implicitly and explicitly asks a variety of questions that all but demand a conflicted response from its audience. Does a person stop being a “minor” psychologically when they turn 18? Does a father have a right to demand anything from his daughter if he didn’t actually raise her? Are you still empowered when you willfully submit to manipulation? Does privilege, both racial and economic, afford people to intellectualize ostensibly cut-and-dry moral issues? Given that you can’t really know anybody, is it worth it to try? And s
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