Review: Waves

Tyler (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) is seventeen and has the world at his feet. A high school wrestler looking at getting into college on a scholarship, he has a loving girlfriend, Alexis (Alexa Demie), a well-off family, and a life in South Florida that's a whirlwind of cars, friends, training and hanging out. There's the occasional off note - his father, Ronald (Sterling K. Brown) is a self-made man who means well but pushes his son maybe a little too hard - but on the whole? Life is good.

And then it isn't, and while this family drama has more to say than simply "shit happens", the capricious nature of life and the way even the steadiest of good fortune can be revealed to be hanging by a thread is at the core of what's to come. A shoulder injury jeopardises his future; seeing it as a personal failure, he decides to keep it secret. Things get worse, and when Alexis reveals she's pregnant his life begins to spiral out of control. Disaster seems inevitable, and the fallout will shatter more lives than his own.

Writer-director Trey Edward Shults (It Comes at Night) is as interested in creating a sensory experience through film as he is in telling a story, though the story here definitely stands up. The early scenes with Tyler sees the camera constantly on the move through an at-times glowing, garish world, sliding and spinning through a life lived at precarious speed. Even before the wheels come off, there's a constant tension, a sense of things only seemingly under control.

In the back half of the film the focus shifts to Tyler's little sister Emily (Taylor Russell), an minor presence early on who turns out to have hidden depths of her own. Already quiet, she becomes almost withdrawn after Tyler's trainwreck and the film's visual energy settles down with her (the aspect ratio also shifts to 4:3 after the increasingly claustrophobic widescreen of Tyler's scenes; when her life once again opens up, so does the screen).

Emily finds a relationship of her own, even as her family struggles (and fails) to come to terms with what's happened. After the tension of the first half of the film, we're in the same situation as Emily, wary of new faces, always alert for the damage they could deal out. What follows is surprising in the way it confirms that life goes on, and can even be good; some of the moments would seem forced or melodramatic in a lesser film, but after what everyone's been through any moment of peace and insight rings true.

Often films that focus so firmly on visuals and sound as Waves earn tags like "lyrical", and it's well-deserved here. But there's a raft of outstanding performances as well, from a cast that moves effortlessly from big scenes to subtle character moments. Shults has created a living, breathing world; it's definitely worth a visit.

- Anthony Morris