I’m Fine (Thanks for Asking): A film as scrappy as its rollerskating, job-juggling heroine

Kelley Kali and Angelique Molina’s award-winning debut, winner of the special jury prize at the South by Southwest film festival, explores the peculiar financial hardships of the Covid-19 era.

The life of working-class Americans, arguably the United States’ most chronically under-represented community, is vividly sketched. The film is as scrappy as the heroine who roller skates from precarious gig-economy deliveries to hair-braiding appointments. The dark shadow of sex work is never far away. A brief, sleazy cameo from Deon Cole, star of Black-ish and a producer here, is simultaneously amusing and dispiriting.

Ever since her husband died, Danny (Kali), a young single mom, and her eight-year-old daughter, Wes, have been camping. After all, Wes loved camping with her dad. “Isn’t this fun?” asks Mom. Of course, it’s not about fun. Danny is frantically trying to hide the truth: they are homeless, and unless she can make $200 in one day they won’t have a deposit to give their surprisingly sympathetic new landlord. The clock is ticking as Danny straps on her leopard-print blades and frantically hustles.

The cinematographer Becky Baihui Chen crafts pleasing tableaux from the constant movement, including a bravura set piece with a puddle. That moment and the young widow’s reluctance to part with a wedding ring remind us that she has simply not had time or space to grieve. She is, as the title suggests, fine, when anyone asks. But not really.

That They May Face the Rising Sun: The best Irish film in a very long time

---

‘When our last embryo failed, the clinic told us there was nothing more they could do for us’

---

Take That in Dublin review: ‘Whose idea was it to have stairs?’ puffs Gary Barlow as the band roll back the years with dazzling show

---

Baby Reindeer’s Richard Gadd on the true story behind the show: ‘People are afraid to admit they made mistakes’

---

Kali, who won the 2018 Student Academy Award for a tale of two Haitian sisters abducted into a human-trafficking ring, and Molina, her codirector and costar, made I’m Fine (Thanks for Asking) on a microbudget in 2020, partly financed by coronavirus stimulus cheques. The film is not as taut as Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov’s similarly themed 2015 thriller, The Lesson, but its freewheeling authenticity gives it charm and momentum.