Film Drop // Beach Rats (2017)
I seem to be drawn to coming of age stories at the moment. Beach Rats by Eliza Hittman, features British actor Harris Dickinson as Frankie from Brooklyn, a young man whose father is dying from cancer in the same summer that he is discovering his sexuality. The film, like Frankie, is short on words and captures a feeling more than a plot; the sensation of wistful, long summer days and nights where Frankie and his friends drift shirtless on beaches and park benches, getting high, watching girls and waiting for the days to pass. The cinematography is lyrical and beautiful. It captures the vulnerability and fragile beauty of teenage boys on the cusp of manhood. Dickinson is particularly talented, his understated performance captures the inarticulacy of a young man grappling with his feelings and desires as he simultaneously tries to understand his place in the world.