It’s difficult to condense a whole life into one feature-length film. Dana Flor’s 1-800-ON-HER-OWN, a documentary centering on 90s folk music icon Ani DiFranco, wisely chooses to focus primarily on just one segment of her subject’s very full life and career. The issue, however, is that Flor concentrates on arguably the most banal period of DiFranco’s life— struggles to make new music and continue touring during and post-COVID-19 pandemic to provide for her family, while that very lifestyle puts a strain on her familial relationships— providing little discussion or context for DiFranco’s larger impact on the music industry.
The benefit of following DiFranco currently is that the bulk of the film is comprised of candid footage of DiFranco on the road— sleeping in airports, settling in to hotel rooms— and discussing her thoughts and feelings. It’s generally more rewarding to hear about a person’s life first-hand as opposed to an array of talking heads, and DiFranco’s bold personality shines through; the way Flor shoots her, with DiFranco often conversing with the camera, makes it feel even more like DiFranco is addressing the audience directly.
It’s all rather shallow, however, even DiFranco’s reflections on the hardships of leaving her husband and children behind when she has to be out on the road, the reasons for which are attributed current need for funds thanks to some bad business deals she made when she was younger (there’s an off-putting tension created by the depiction of a younger DiFranco, who held a figurative middle finger up to capitalism, placed side-by-side with present-day DiFranco, who is essentially only performing for money). Throughout, DiFranco and the film reflect back on her life and career through archival footage and personal recollections, but her biography isn’t especially thorough. Those who enter the film largely unfamiliar with DiFranco and her work will likely fail to come away with a sense of her cultural impact, from her rise to cult fame to her status as a queer icon to her assertiveness and activism as a woman in a male-dominated industry, including founding her own label, Righteous Babe Records, in 1990, allowing her to distribute her music independently. Watching her in the present day as she navigates a grueling tour schedule while trying to make new music, with only a sketch of her prior career presented, it’s difficult not to wonder, “Why should we care?”
1-800-ON-HER-OWN is most engaging when it courts controversy. She connects with a Bon Iver member to collaborate on a new album, the bulk of which has to occur over zoom calls when the pandemic hits, and it’s a wake-up call for the stubbornly independent artist when he essentially breaks up with her, suggesting that he can’t give her what she needs in a partnership. By extension, partnership may be something DiFranco struggles with in general, but the film fails to fully reckon with that in both her home and work life, merely presenting those conflicts before veering toward a tidy pay-yourself-on-the-back ending. It has its moments (and at 77 minutes, it’s not a grueling watch by any stretch), but it’s all a little too mainstream a sketch of an artist who has always been anything but that.
1-800-ON-HER-OWN had its world premiere at the 2024 Tribeca Film Festival on June 10. Runtime: 77 minutes.
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