One of my most admired humans is Rick Steves. If you’re not familiar with him, he’s the Seattle-based creator of a travel empire. Since the late 1970s, he’s written guidebooks on affordable and thoughtful European travel. Since the early 1990s, he’s produced numerous television series that mostly focus on where, how, and why one should travel to Europe and other environs. He’s an advocate for the legalization of marijuana. He’s pleasantly dorky, the kind of liberal that isn’t a hectoring scold and always puts his money where his mouth is.

All of that is great, but that’s not the main reason I’m a fan of Steves, a Steveshead, if you will. Read his book “Travel as a Political Act, “ and you’ll soon learn that the act of going to a place you’re totally ignorant about is the best possible way to stamp out ignorance. Travel teaches you to embrace different cultures, to leap outside of your comfort zone.

All that is true, and that core concept resonates deeply with me. Yet the fact remains that after you depart the plane, leave the hotel, and feel the cobblestones of an unfamiliar city beneath your feet, you’ll always have your baggage with you. A change of scenery can’t remove the things we carry with us, but it can dislodge them, jostle them, and sometimes force us to consider them in new ways. That’s the premise of Unpacking, a clever indie dramedy that shows us the power of new locations with honesty and vulnerability.

You know those wellness retreats, the ones where the guests journal, do yoga, and learn more about how to become the best possible versions of themselves? That’s precisely what the Woman Soul Reset Retreat is. Located at what I’m sure is a hideously expensive resort in Bali, influencer/wellness guru Keri Hart (Sam Bianchini) welcomes her latest crop of applicants, all white American women.* They are:

• Jackie (Jessica Rotondi), who’s emerged from a grueling divorce and is eager to reinvent herself.
• Alice (Katie Braden), whose daughter has left for college and who needs to learn more about her identity beyond motherhood.
• Charlotte (Michal Sinnott), who is both quite pregnant and quite nervous about her impending motherhood.
• Ruby (Alexandra Clayton), who has issues with her sister Charlotte, their deceased father, and health challenges of her own.
• Eithne (Stephanie Ann Whited), who was ditched by her partner for the retreat. She’s super pissed about that, about the retreat, pretty much everything. Also, the “th” in her name is silent. 

What’s supposed to happen is that Keri, along with yoga influencer Ni Ketut (Dania Arancha), will lead the guests through spiritual transformation. What does happen is different. A few of the women will encounter cheerful horndog and “kuta cowboy” Happy (Gandhi Fernando). Rituals and ceremonial masks will lead to revelations. Keri will undergo a massive crisis of confidence at the worst possible time. Oh, yes, a lot of baggage will be unpacked.

If I’m being honest with you, I was torn on writing a review for Unpacking. On the one hand, you know I’m good with signal boosting indie films. On the other hand, the film initially appeared to be something that shared DNA with The White Lotus, and I was not enthusiastic about watching horrible rich people being horrible and rich. For reasons that should be obvious, I don’t have the bandwidth to deal with media about the wealthy unless it prominently features a guillotine. 

Luckily for everyone, Unpacking is both not that and far better than that! While the majority of the film concerns people talking, directors Alexandra Clayton and Michal Sinnott aren’t content to let green screen do the heavy lifting. They’ve shot on location in Bali, and scenes of everyday life and the gorgeous landscape effectively makes us feel like we’re there. I also nearly danced a celebratory jig when I learned about the tight-as-a-drum eighty one minute runtime. The film doesn’t have an ounce of fat on it, and the pacing never drags.

Part of the reason for that is the efficient direction, yet a larger reason is the perceptive screenplay by Sinnott, Clayton, and Joseph Schollaert. They do spend a little time on satirizing the concept of a wellness retreat for white women, and the script does have a sly sense of humor. While a lesser screenplay would reduce the characters to cliches, this script drills down into real, three dimensional characterization. We see why these women have come to the retreat, what they think of each other, and what they think of themselves. That fleshes them all out and makes them compelling and utterly relatable. 

As a result, the cast understands the tone and adjusts their performances accordingly. I suspect the two favorites for a lot of viewers will be Jessica Rotondi as Jackie and Stephanie Ann Whited as Eithne. Rotundi’s Jackie initially comes off as a brassy goofball fixated on her healing crystals. She knows that and effectively uses that knowledge against us later. Whited gets a lot of quiet comedic mileage as the sarcastic Eithne and, like Rotundi, the fusion of script and performance takes our expectations and twists them. I wished a little more screen time had gone to Sam Bianchini as Keri. She does subtle work showing us the gradual crumble of Keri’s confidence, and as is, it somewhat comes out of nowhere. A tiny bit of backstory would have given her character the same weight as her clients.

At the end of every episode of “Rick Steves’ Europe,” Steves signs off with the motto, “Keep on traveling.” He knows when we embark on a journey, we’re traveling physically, psychologically, and emotionally. That concept is exactly where Steves’ ethos and the concept of Unpacking meet on the Venn diagram. With humor, compassion, and efficiency, the film reminds us that for good or ill, wherever we go, there we are.

*Big respect to the script for calling that aspect out!

Tim Brennan Movie Critic

Tim has been alarmingly enthusiastic about movies ever since childhood. He grew up in Boulder and, foolishly, left Colorado to study Communications in Washington State. Making matters worse, he moved to Connecticut after meeting his too-good-for-him wife. Drawn by the Rockies and a mild climate, he triumphantly returned and settled down back in Boulder County. He's written numerous screenplays, loves hiking, and embarrassed himself in front of Samuel L. Jackson. True story.