It’s 20 October, and Solo (Souléymane Sy Savané), a taxi driver from Senegal with a cheery disposition, is offered $1,000 to drive William (Red West) to Blowing Rock, a jagged rock high up in the Blue Ridge Mountains, the only place in the world where snow has been recorded to blow upside down and back into the sky. After numerous unsuccessful attempts to uncover William’s plans during their initial ride, Solo fears the worst and thus agrees to the deal in order to befriend and, hopefully, defer William from his intent.
What’s surprising is that as the film moves along we learn more about the life of Solo than that of William, which remains ambiguous throughout. As the title suggests – but not as one might first expect – this film is about Solo and his journey to understand the despair in the mind of a man whose life is so different to, yet in some instances almost prophetic of, his own future. William unwillingly divulges that his own wife left him 30 years ago, apparently with no children. In Solo’s life his pregnant Mexican wife refuses to see him after discovering a letter inviting Solo to an interview for a job as a flight attendant, work that will take him away from home.
A series of repeated settings combined with a lack of interference from the additional characters to help focus the attention towards the relationship between the two opposite personalities, Solo with his hopeful, joyous view on life and William, an aggressive, lonely and defeated old man. Only Alex, Solo’s 9-year-old stepdaughter, manages unknowingly to soften William’s attitude toward Solo.
But as their relationship grows, Solo realises that to act as a true friend he must not prevent William from doing what he wants, but support him in his ultimate decision.
