Director: Cristina Costantini
Writers: Cristina Costantini, Tom Maroney
Stars: Lindsey Lamer, Varda Appleton, Billie Jean King
Synopsis: Sally Ride’s groundbreaking journey as the first American woman in space concealed a deeply personal story. Her life partner, Tam O’Shaughnessy, unveils their covert 27-year romance and its accompanying sacrifices.
When Tam O’Shaughnessy and Sally Ride first met at a tennis tournament when they were 12 and 13, respectively, the first thing the former noticed was that the latter was standing on her toes. When the line of girls waiting for their draws moved forward, Ride’s posture didn’t relent; she walked on her toes, too, as though she was hoping to literally stick out above the competition. It makes sense, then, that despite her relative quietude, a tendency that leaned toward shyness until comfortable enough to break out of her shell, Ride couldn’t be stopped from delivering eight-minute-long scouting reports on the pre-teen competition, nor from intentionally nabbing the pressure position in double’s matches. As Molly Tyson put it, some people want the last shot when the game is on the line, “and Sally was like that.” She may not have said so explicitly, but she made a not-so-subtle effort to call for the ball before the clock hit zero.
With the anecdotes from her youth in mind, perhaps it should be no surprise that when NASA began expanding its astronaut core in 1976, Ride took it upon herself to turn in a handwritten letter talking up how she would be eager to bring her astrophysics experience to the space program, one of many assets that qualified her to “contribute as much to the program as [she expected] to get out of it.” She grew up in the heyday of the space program, seeing news of the United States’ space-related efforts on the front page of the newspaper every morning, and fondly remembering when her elementary school teachers would wheel in television sets so that the students could watch early launches. “I think all the kids dreamed of being astronauts at one point or another,” Ride once said. And while it didn’t initially occur to her that she could be an astronaut due to NASA’s patriarchal makeup, the moment that changed, Ride took the leap; by 1983, she orbited into history, becoming the first American woman to ever go to space. Insert your chosen “one small step for woman” quip here.
You know what? Don’t. It’s a waste of energy, and if it were up to Ride, all energy would be expended in even the loftiest efforts, whether that has anything to do with space travel or not. As described by her friends, coworkers, and loved ones in Cristina Costantini’s Sally – a National Geographic documentary that world premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival – this was the titular astronaut’s way, maintaining a drive that propelled her to heights no woman had been to before, while also detracting from her own personal truths, the biggest of which didn’t come to light until Ride lost her battle with pancreatic cancer in 2012: For 27 years, she and O’Shaughnessy had been partners. As O’Shaughnessy states early on in the film, “Sally risked everything to make history. But telling the world about us was a risk she just couldn’t take.”
On paper, that line reads like the sort of heartbreaking wallop that would serve as the breaking point for a couple in a hammy romantic drama, all before the friend lending an ear to such emotional testimony tells the main character to go get them back. In reality, O’Shaughnessy’s delivery is much more matter-of-fact. It seems that this was Sally’s way, and that everyone in her life was either okay with it or resigned to it, if not a combination of both. “It hurt me, but I’m not sure it hurt Sally,” O’Shaughnessy continued. “She didn’t care about such things.” To Costantini’s credit, Sally doesn’t shy away from painting its subject as she was seen by those she was closest to, even as it goes to great, overdone lengths to document her accomplishments while at NASA. After all, Ride can only be seen and heard from in archival footage and audio; the interviews that otherwise guide the film are from her aforementioned confidants; as well as journalists, historians, and a brief appearance from Billie Jean King.
And to be fair, that aforementioned archival footage is often put to good use, those that help to paint a “when you fall down, you get back up” sort of tone to the film, and thus Ride’s professional ascendance. While there are interviews and clips that shed a light on the treatment of women at NASA even after they had been ushered into its ranks – like questions about space travel’s impact on child-bearing, and whether or not a woman could simply handle the pressure that such a task places on a person – also featured are a slew of triumphs for Ride, like how, in 1981, she was selected to be the capsule communicator for Mission STS-2, the second Space Shuttle mission conducted by NASA. This made her the only person in mission control with the ability to talk to the astronauts on said shuttle; she handled the pressure brought on by a series of potentially life-threatening issues with the spacecraft calmly, Shaughnessy notes, garnering praise from her male colleagues in the control room. Of course, the main focus is placed on Ride being the first woman in space, and much of Sally’s midsection dedicates its attention to the launch, its lead-up and aftermath included. Ironically, the most interesting piece of history that the film delves into also happens to be the most devastating, that being the tragic explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger; Ride was appointed by Ronald Reagan to be a member of a special investigative panel looking into the disaster, and among other failures of NASA’s, it contributed to Ride’s eventual resignation from the agency.
If you’re unfamiliar with Ride’s specific portion of interstellar history, then Costantini’s efforts to place such an emphasis on the details of her subject’s professional escapades will feel informative, if not particularly inventive. Yet the ping-ponging nature between Ride’s astronaut career and the internal conflict she dealt with in her personal life makes one itch for a work that delves deeper. It’s as though the film’s subjects are keeping in line with how private Ride was when discussing non-NASA matters in interviews. Molly Tyson – the friend from tennis who also happened to be a past girlfriend of Ride’s – has a few fleeting on-cams that contribute minor elements of exposition to Ride’s personality. Steven Hawley, the astronaut to whom Ride was married for five years, is featured somewhat prominently, but he hardly digs beyond the surface of his emotions regarding the strained nature of their relationship due to Ride’s sexuality, of which he was initially suspicious but unaware.
O’Shaughnessy has the most screen time of any interviewee, yet her testimonies seem to have been reduced to generalities. While recounting the details of the early stages of their relationship, O’Shaughnessy notes that she and Ride were “always excited to see each other,” and that their chemistry was palpable. When she speaks of the first moment she realized that Ride was interested in her romantically, O’Shaughnessy describes how she felt when Ride’s hand touched her lower back, and how it was a different feeling than what she had experienced before. It’s this sort of anecdote – intimate retellings of firsts and lasts, like one about how these two long-time partners danced in their living room when Ride was approaching her last days – that are far too rare in documentaries of this nature, and only show up sparingly here. When they do, the proceedings are injected with a bolt of lightning, but that sensation is gone as swiftly as it struck.
In terms of its filmmaking, the main thing that differentiates Sally from the many similar entries that represent the ghosts of Sundance’s past is the frequent use of intimately-constructed reenactments shot with actors portraying young versions of its featured “characters.” It’s an overused tactic in documentarianism, often deployed cheaply in order to fill space that can’t be uncovered through research and thus can’t be physically seen on film, but Costantini utilizes just enough visual flair in these moments that they don’t feel invasive nor entirely unnecessary. One moment of particular intimacy between O’Shaughnessy and Ride slowly dissolves into the night sky, littered with stars and the glare of a solstice. More use of this storytelling method should not be wished for, but if it must be done, the way to go about it is what you see here.
But these dramatizations aren’t what you watch documentaries for. You watch them to learn, to gain insight, and hopefully, to discover something brand new that you couldn’t have found elsewhere. Watching Sally, I was too often reminded of recent festival premieres like 2024’s Never Look Away and 2022’s The Janes, both clunky works of non-fiction that played more like audiovisual textbooks than innovations of the craft, and not necessarily because Sally has a one-to-one throughline to either, but because it fits a mold that feels familiar, irritatingly so. One of the worst things a film – and especially a documentary – can do is make its viewer wonder what its story might look like if done differently; my anticipation for the forthcoming series The Challenger isn’t exactly through the roof, but I’m suddenly curious to see how Kristen Stewart plays Sally Ride, a fascinating figure whose legacy is honored and celebrated here, if not quite interestingly enough to warrant a 90-minute film that goes only slightly further than that of a truncated biographical summary. If it isn’t obvious, though, the eventual Disney +-streaming Sally wasn’t made in order to promote a television show from an entirely different distributor. It was made to tell the story of a woman who reached for the stars and became the first of a sort to ever touch them. It’s a shame that the same can’t be said about the film itself.
