7 Days (2021 Tribeca Film Festival); Grade: B
Strictly Films welcomes you to coverage of this year's 2021 Tribeca Film Festival! I honestly didn't know this was occurring to be honest, until I looked on Letterboxd and saw Eric Striffler from Pretty Much It logged a film in from the festival. Make sure to check out Pretty Much It on YouTube and enjoy some fun commentary tracks, on shows and films. I was not paid for that, I genuinely enjoy Pretty Much It and Eric especially cool dude! Our first film on the block: 7 Days.
7 Days is centered around a pre arranged date between Ravi (Karan Soni) and Rita (Geraldine Viswanathan), organized by their traditional Indian parents. This first date of theirs came at a rather bad timing, as the era of Covid appears. These two will endure many days in a shelter in place setting, as they'll discover each other and develop an unexpected connection.
When I saw A Duplass Brothers Productions, I knew instantly I was in for some low budget glory on my hands, as the pair has been known to deliver some underrated gems. You can add 7 Days to that list as well.
7 Days embarks on a simple storyline, imagining a bondage being developed in a quarantine like setting. Surely when you can't go outside and live everyday life, you can likely develop a connection with someone, as the level of boredom will influence you to communicate and learn about one another. What's cool about 7 Days is though the plot line is surely simple on paper, it does add some elements you would not normally see. Like the whole Traditional Indian arrangement element was a very out of a park choice, yet it kind of works and even brings value. Like Ravi trying immensely hard to get married to avoid loneliness, as Rita trying to avoid love as she fears to open up and get hurt.
Within these two unlikely pair in a setting like this: Over the course of time, they embark in a rather special connection that'll surely endure in some rather difficult situations across the way. It's all done fairly well, you feel the connection within these two characters, followed by solid performances and solid chemistry between Karan and Geraldine. The humor in this does indeed help, as there were some solid comedic material in this film. Some jokes here and there didn't quite land however, just to point that out.
Some may question my thoughts on the Zoom moments and honestly... It didn't felt like I was enduring Zoom at all, it felt more like FaceTime. If it was Zoom they were using, at least these sequences had a moral purpose within those scenes, and also the audio and visuals weren’t horrible. Like they weren't like Locked Up, where every single damn Zoom sequence was utterly pointless and a total mess from a visual and audio standpoint. With 7 Days: The scenes within those moments helped follow along the story and also helped Ravi during a difficult situation in mind.
I want to point out as how did Ravi and Rita got a hold of masks so fast?! The film takes place around March 2020 and it's come to my attention majority of the country lacked in CCP, so really nobody really had access to masks, heck no one was really selling masks at this time. I think I can point out a few mask logic issues within this film, as far as scenes in which characters wearing a mask make no actual sense. Especially the finale... However, the finale kind of justifies the mask logic as what happens later on in the scene. Like yeah I'm questioning the entire thing leading up to this point, but at least it kind of works in the most corniest way possible and just this scene alone is just too cute to complain about it honestly.
7 Days is a simple film, that does however have quite a few surprises that you wouldn't expect from a story like this.
Overall, 7 Days was a solid film. I recommend checking this one out. -Mitch Smietana