Duty Free: Mom-And-Me Bucket-List Adventure Lacks Depth

By Linda Barnard

Rating: C

It’s a question that makes me bristle: “Are you still working?” Grey hair and a lengthy career must signal that it’s time for me to punch out permanently.

I have no plans to quit work. Neither did hotel housekeeper Rebecca Danigelis in the documentary Duty Free, directed by her youngest son, New York freelance TV journalist Sian-Pierre Regis.

After decades making sure everything was just so for hotel guests, Danigelis had risen to executive housekeeper at a Boston hotel. Fired at age 75, she was devastated. There was a lot more than pride on the line for this elegant-looking, energetic woman who had always worked and wanted to continue.

With just $600 in the bank, Danigelis could lose the one-bedroom apartment above the hotel that came with her job. Her small salary barely paid her bills. How would she manage the expenses she has always covered for her oldest son, who has schizophrenia and lives in a group home?

Regis, a 30-something filmmaker who had been documenting his mother’s struggles on his iPhone, came up with an idea to give her hope and a sense of purpose. He suggested she make list of all the things she wanted to do but put off as a sole-support mother raising her family. Then they would do them together.

How can I possibly afford that, she asks?

Mom, meet the Internet.

A crowdfunding campaign raises $60,000. Regis is her adventure partner and the occasionally breathlessly upbeat narrator as his mother uncharacteristically focuses squarely on her own happiness.

PROUDLY SUPPORTS ORIGINAL-CIN

Things start out on the light side: she gets an Instagram account and milks a cow. There’s skydiving in Hawaii.

Duty Free stops being a YOLO video and enters more purposeful storytelling through other items on the list. They reveal parts of Danigelis’ life that were unknown or barely explained to her son. He admits that, like many young adults, he’d never asked his mother about her life.

Married not long after moving to Detroit from Britain, Danigelis had a daughter, Joanne. Soon divorced, Danigelis discovered lumps in her breast and sent young Joanne to England to be raised by her sister. The girl never lived with her mother again.

Reuniting with Joanne for the first time in 10 years is on Danigelis’ list. There are happy hugs and tears when they arrive in the UK, but Joanne also speaks candidly about the hurt she still carries, childhood fears she wasn’t wanted and was sent away as punishment.

Danigelis thinks she needs to get over it. She’s one for getting on with things when life takes an unhappy turn, but she struggles with applying the same philosophy to landing a new job. Who wants to hire a woman who graduated in 1964, she wonders? Determined to look “vibrant,” she dons a scarlet scarf and carefully does her hair and makeup for an interview.

She has more success with social media love. With 50,000 Instagram followers and Regis working his contacts, Danigelis becomes a temporary celebrity and inspiration.

Duty Free spends little time exploring the ageism that’s at the heart of Danigelis’ employment difficulties. There’s a quick mention at the end of the doc that 25 million Americans don’t have enough money to pay for retirement, but no exploration of the how and why.

It would have made for a more satisfying film had Regis gotten beyond the road-trip selfies.

Duty Free. Directed by Sian-Pierre Regis. With Sian-Pierre Regis and Rebecca Danigelis. Available for streaming through the Vancouver International Film Festival (viff.org) starting May 7.