Beach Rats

Eliza Hittman continues in her exploration of the awakening of teenage sexuality, with which she began in her debut, It Felt Like Love (2013), shot from the perspective of an adolescent girl. Beach Rats has a more conventional structure and, if you have seen a few festival dramas thematicising homosexuality among youths, you will in all probability figure out the direction that the narrative is going to take. Also, the characters fit too easily into boxes known from American indie dramas. The film is most effective when it speaks of male bodies and faces (in which it closely resembles the work of Claire Denis), lyrically and naturalistically shot in 16 mm by French cinematographer Hélène Louvart (see, for example, Alice Rohrwacher’s The Wonders). The film is more captivating and inspiring as a study of male bodies in motion than as another intimate coming-out drama about repressed sexual desire. 70% (02/04/2018)

It seemed to me that the film tries very hard to imitate Moonlight and to define the current form of films where a boy or a girl becomes a man or a woman. However, it's very similar, very slow, and realistic on the one hand, yet at the same time it can't really go any further in what it depicts, as if the film wants to avoid getting too close to porn. Which is too bad. (16/01/2018)