Tendaberry (2024)
Coney Island drew me in. It's the iconic, salt-bleached backdrop of The Warriors, one of my absolute favourite films, and the moment I clocked that Haley Elizabeth Anderson's 2024 indie drama was set along that famous stretch of boardwalk, I was in. Location can do that to you. It can carry a weight of promise before a single frame has played out. The trouble with Tendaberry is that the promise of its setting is about as far as things go.
The opening act is genuinely quite charming. We follow Dakota, a young woman chasing her musical dreams in New York, who falls into a sweet, grounded connection with a local man. It's the kind of modest, intimate setup that makes you settle into your seat and think, right, I'm with this. A heartfelt, character-driven romance rooted in a specific, vivid place. I was hoping for something in the spirit of Vicky Cristina Barcelona, that same sense of place shaping people in quiet but real ways. Tendaberry hints it could go somewhere like that.
Then it pivots. Sharply, and not entirely convincingly.
The love interest is compelled to return to Ukraine to care for his ailing father, only to become tragically caught up in the Russian invasion. I want to be careful here, because the real-world gravity of that conflict is not something to wave away. But there is a genuine craft problem in how the film tries to absorb that weight into what is, structurally, a modest little indie romance. The gears grind. The pacing, which had been snappy and engaging, slows to something close to a crawl. What follows is a prolonged stretch of watching Dakota busk on the streets of New York, searching for meaning in her grief and her stalled ambitions. And the busking sequences, bless them, go on. Her vocal performances are fine, honestly. Just fine. "Ok" is about right. When a film leans on extended musical performance to carry emotional freight, it needs those moments to be genuinely arresting. These aren't.
The second half falls almost entirely on the shoulders of lead actress Kota Johan, and I can see what the film wants from her. It wants stillness, interiority, the kind of quiet devastation that speaks through a look or a pause. It's an ambitious ask. The problem is the material simply isn't strong enough to support it. When a film strips away plot and co-stars and essentially isolates a character in her own melancholy, it needs a performance of real magnetic pull to stop you drifting. The script gives Dakota too little to actively do, and too much to passively feel. The result is a frustrating exercise in watching someone exist in unvarnished sadness without enough texture to make that sadness gripping.
There's something of a similar risk taken in Youth, that same willingness to let a film breathe and linger, to trust mood over momentum. But Youth earns its silences. Tendaberry mistakes them for depth.
Anderson clearly has a genuine story she wants to tell about love, distance, and the brutal intrusion of the wider world into private lives. That is a worthwhile story. But the execution is a bit of a mess. Lingering shots and busking montages are being asked to do the work that character development and a stronger central performance should be doing instead. There's a version of this film that lands. This version doesn't quite get there.
Beautiful setting. Well-meaning heart. Fundamentally undone by its own structural ambitions.
Two and a half stars.
Rating: ★★½ | Year: 2024 | Watched: 2026-08-08
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: MUBI · MUBI Amazon Channel
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
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