Film Review: GOD’S TIME: NYC Anxiety Cinema At Its Funniest [Tribeca 2022]

God’s Time Review

God’s Time (2022) Film Review from the 21st Annual Tribeca Film Festival, a movie written and directed by Daniel Antebi, starring Ben Groh, Dion Costelloe, Liz Caribel Sierra, Jared Abrahamson, Segun Akande, Bobby Guarino, Ira Hawkins, Sol Miranda, Manuel Penichet, John Pope, Christiane Seidel, Luisa Sofia, Jonathan Tierney, Susan Torres, and Natalie Woolams-Torres.

You wouldn’t be wrong for putting God’s Time in the same echelon of NYC Anxiety Cinema as you do the Safdie brothers, since writer-director Daniel Antebi imbues his feature-length debut with the same crazed momentum as do those scruffy indie-darling Jewish boys from Queens. But – and I assure you, this is not a dig against Josh and Benny – Antebi adopts the brothers’ manic approach only to then go: “But what if it were all really, really funny, too?” The result is a chaotic spin on the cross-town, race-against-the-clock narrative that’s all about testing the limits of friendship and audience endurance – so much so that, by the end of it, you won’t know if you’re keeling over from laughter or raised blood pressure.

Leading us on this journey is Dev (Ben Groh), a former drug addict who’s clean of everything except his overwhelming main character syndrome. Try as he might to play coy and shrug it off with his “I’m not the hero” misdirection, he’s certainly willing to mug for the camera and offer up unsolicited psychoanalysis for anyone in his peripheries. That scrutiny usually falls to his best friend and fellow recovering addict Luca (Dion Costelloe), a softer-spoken wannabe actor who can never quite find his voice. Also in the mix is Regina (Liz Caribel Sierra), another addict whose unpredictable personality is anchored by her reliably rote “share” (the story that addicts tell in their group recovery sessions).

Dev is secretly smitten for Regina and yet, in all his cocksure protagonist prowess, never catches on to the fact that she and Luca are hooking up on the DL. Although Regina and Luca have their own unspoken truths, as well, which only further contributes to their unstable emotional triangle that’s on the verge of crumbling.

And the incepting crack comes when Dev’s hyper-fixation takes note of Regina’s trademark sign-off (and the film’s namesake), “All in God’s time”,  being absent from her most recent share. It wouldn’t have been so noteworthy if she hadn’t preceded it with her stone-faced desire to kill her ex-boyfriend who kicked her out and stole her dog, and thus this break in her pattern sends Dev into a panicked and conspiratorial frenzy. Unable to convince anyone that Regina’s speech wasn’t just a former junkie venting – after all: he’s a former junkie, too, so what does he have that makes him a more trustworthy character? – he grabs a reluctant Luca (and us, too, via his copious fourth-wall breaks) to begin a chase across the city to clear up all these misconceptions and potentially save a couple of lives while he’s at it.

The incredulity of watching God’s Time’s madness unspool is compounded when you realize that its three leads are all relatively newcomers – particularly Groh and Sierra, as this is the feature debut for the former and the overall acting debut for the latter. Groh and Costelloe have such razor-sharp comic timing and improvisational rapport that you’d think they’d been doing this shtick together for decades. Sierra – who was awarded a Special Jury Mention for Best Performance as part of Tribeca’s U.S. Narrative Competition – brings a non-stop ferocity to Regina that is as awesome as it is intimidating. Together, the three of them conjure up an unbridled charisma to their journey(s) that are heartfelt, humorous, and ultimately human.

On top of that, Antebi’s stylized encasings are immediately captivating. Although it emanates the hyperbolic excesses of an always-logged-on modern world (this would’ve been GIF’d to hell by mid-2010s Film Tumblr) it rarely feels rote or gimmicky. Just like its sense of pulse-pounding anxiety, so too is its sense of humor very earnest.

Even Antebi’s approach to audience engagement is clever, as the characters (mostly Dev, but others too) heave the audience headfirst into their hectic day in a way that feels organic and second-nature: Dev addresses us before going back to his recovery meeting; during the climax one character forces the camera to look at them through angry chiding, reminding them (read: us) that this is what they wanted; during the denouement someone softly nudges the camera away in irritation, finally finding the attention they’ve been craving unwelcome. The film’s approach to self-awareness is an incredibly humbling one, and perfectly mirrors its trio’s inevitable struggle towards the same thing.

It’s an absolutely striking feature debut with some of the best (if not the best) performances of the year. I’m so excited that I cannot wait to see what Antebi has in store for us next, but y’know, as Regina would say: “All in God’s time.”

Rating: 9/10

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