BEACH RATS Review
In director/writer Eliza Hittman’s quietly yearning BEACH RATS, the beaches near Brooklyn, New York are open for another summer. Tourists flock to see Coney Island, eat food, partake in carnival attractions and of course, watch the explosion of colors above their head. For day one residents like Frankie (Harris Dickinson) and his posse of similarly dressed (white tank tops (optional), basketball shorts, and high tops) friends, every summer is just like the last one. For these young men, their lives are composed of shambling days and shadowed nights, where they are left to their own devices. For Frankie, these nights allow for him to do some drugs and scour the online chat rooms for other men looking to hookup or some other form of a deep personal connection with another man.
Outside of his home, where he lives with his mother (Kate Hodge), his sister (Nicole Flyus) and his chronically ill father (Neal Huff), Frankie adopts a look of cool confidence, sauntering between his friends’ local hangouts and shooting looks at girls that pass their way. But back at home, under the night in the depths of his basement, Frankie becomes more nervous and shy. In these chatrooms with other men, Frankie finds himself with other like-minded men, men who have the chance to understand him (if not take advantage of his youth in some way), if he lets them in. While it seems that Frankie may find release in his self-discovery, he soon finds himself stuck between his already established image displayed with his friends and family and the secret budding image that comes alive at night online or at highway motels. It is this internal conflict, Frankie’s Day and his Night, that drive BEACH RATS’ story.
While Hittman and co. take a soft, almost gazy look at the inner plight of a young man, one can’t help but feel the general familiarities around a story such as this one. Indeed, Dickinson, in the lead role and the first major role of his career, more than does the job portraying a lost and conflicted young man. With his imposing physical stature and his somewhat haunted eyes, Dickinson can effectively display swagger and inner turmoil with ease. With the help of Hittman’s direction, which focuses more on capturing the feelings of its main character, BEACH RATS is more of a mood piece than a fully developed tale as the director’s script leaves a lot on the table for the audience to fill in, mostly involving characters other than Frankie, who feel more like generalizations of the denizens of Frankie’s hometown rather than full-blown characters. While this does allow the understated pressures of masculinity that Frankie faces to become slowly evident, it’s a shame that his surrounding cast is not given enough love as he is when it comes to depth and personality.
Nevertheless, BEACH RATS captures a seldom seen side of New York (Brooklyn, to be exact) with a mix of gritty realism and dreaminess thanks in part to Helene Louvart’s cinematography and Hittman’s eye for locations. Whether filming the daytime antics of Frankie and co. with more or less natural light or the nighttime rendezvous’ with various men, shot in pure darkness sans some harsh lighting from seemingly the camera itself, Hittman effectively puts the viewers right with Frankie on his journey of inner discovery. A journey that nonetheless goes through some familiar hoops, such as the moments where Frankie’s secrets start to bleed out and into the attention of his friends and family. While these scenes are handled well, even extremely well in some cases in their depiction of a young man coming to terms with who he is, the overall turns in the story are something you’ve probably seen before. Even the film’s conclusion, which hints at some much darker consequences feels a bit like a cop-out (and almost becomes a cliche in regards to most other indie films revolving around youths).
Even so, BEACH RATS is a well-made little film about big internal conflicts. There are moments where Hittman seems to be on the verge of something great but even so, it seems like she takes a step back merely content with letting the audience get to know Frankie a tad bit more.
3/5
