‘Will & Harper’: Sundance Review

Dir: Josh Greenbaum. US. 2024. 114 mins.

The road trip Harper Steele makes with her old friend Will Ferrell after telling him she is coming out as a trans woman is paved with their solid long-term friendship and fuelled by honesty and love. Josh Greenbaum’s documentary follows them on a journey that sees them explore what, if anything, this changes about the nature of their friendship at the same time as providing Harper with a wingman as she enters some male-dominated spaces she hasn’t returned to since she came out.

Fuelled by honesty and love

The fact Will is not just any old wingman, but someone who attracts, often deliberately, significant attention wherever he goes means it’s sometimes hard to know how genuine all the encounters are. Nevertheless the film’s open-hearted nature, along with Will’s presence, should mean distributors see plenty of potential for a much wider audience than might usually engage with this topic after its Sundance screenings in the festival’s Premieres section.

The plan is for the actor and comedian, who met the comedy writer on his first day at Saturday Night Live in 1995, to motor from New York to Los Angeles in Harper’s elderly Grand Wagoneer. Along the way they plan some stops of personal significance but also drop in to various diners, dive bars and restaurants in states including Texas and New Mexico.

The set-up makes for an episodic consideration of their friendship and, to a lesser extent, the everyday issues trans women face just going about their business, as Greenbaum films them on the road. There’s a winning intimacy to exchanges in the car or when they simply plonk down a pair of camping chairs everywhere from a supermarket parking lot to the edge of the Grand Canyon. The conversation often moves from joking back and forth to more serious subjects as Harper welcomes Will’s curiosity about her life and reveals her own anxieties and hopes for the future.

In addition to chatting, Harper also reads excerpts from journals she wrote before her transition, including a particularly gruelling encounter with an unsympathetic therapist. Harper says one of the important elements of the trip is to try visit places like the bars she used to love without having to hide her authentic self. While there is no doubting Will’s commitment or support for his friend, this is where the situations feel occasionally forced.

At a BBQ joint, for example, Harper, looking ready for a perfectly ordinary night out, suddenly finds herself accompanied by Will in full Sherlock Holmes regalia. Although doubtless meant as a funny bit of business, the result is that they attract a lot more attention than they almost certainly would have otherwise, especially after Will orders an enormous steak intended to be eaten within an hour. In fairness to the comic, he realises his mistake as even he starts to feel obviously uncomfortable. He breaks down in tears about it the next day in a poignant exchange between him and Harper that illustrates the depth of their friendship. The flurry of online abuse they attract is a sad reminder of how enabling social media can be for hatred.

It’s interesting that when Harper goes into a dive bar alone, with its pro-Trump posters and Confederate flag, while Will waits anxiously outside, she gets a much more naturalistic welcome. These moments, where Harper is the focus and we can see her gaining confidence to go it alone, are among the film’s most moving. There’s a touching authenticity too, to an encounter at the Grand Canyon with a woman who used to be a therapist, who talks about her own regret for not being more helpful to a trans client.

While Will and Harper’s friendship gives the film its strongly beating heart, the casual reactions of strangers often also prove to be moving. When Harper tells one man at a race track how anxious she was about returning to watch after her transition, he says, simply: “If you enjoy it, come out.” You can’t help feeling the world would be a better and more authentic place, if everyone took that view.