Beach Rats

It’s unusual for a film to blend raw sex, sexuality and a certain eroticism but Eliza Hittman’s Beach Rats does that as well as lobbing a few other issues in to the steaming brew.

Set in Brooklyn, Frankie (Harris Dickinson) is out for the summer months, shooting the waves at the beach and generally larking around with his friends. He has the façade of a good time sport but below the surface there are seething, complicated emotions and questions of self-identity. He cruises online gay talk rooms, just peeping at first, discarded by some as a time waster.

Round about the same time he attracts Simone (Madeline Weinstein) at a funfair. One thing doesn’t lead to another – albeit in a very sensuous scene - and both are left frustrated. Meeting her on the beach he apologises and asks for another chance. In the background there’s his younger sister who is experimenting with boys, and his mother out of sorts and having to look after his father, at home dying of cancer.

Frankie eventually plucks up the courage and arranges to meet one of the men from the site. It’s a soulless encounter, though it quenches a need. This directly leads to an incident on a boat which in turn causes Madeline to end their liaison. Almost nonplussed he’s back on line, only his desperation for acceptance, money and drugs causes him to make some ultimately life changing decisions.

There’s familiar coming of age theme to Beach Rats but its lifted from the routine by the excellent natural performances from the entire cast. Relative newcomer Dickinson is excellent as the teen not necessarily looking for his sexual identity, or the best of both worlds, just trying to find his way through a confusing period.

There’s a cold detachment about Frankie – that lasts right up until the end of the film, when gazing up at fireworks he possibly has an epiphany. He appears siloed, though consciously manipulative of those around him. Several times he says about his friends that they are not, and you get the feeling that this isn’t some throwaway line, he means it.

Hittman’s script is wry and sharp while her stylized direction at times using extreme close ups on faces and bodies. But just as easily the camera glides over rather than lingers on Frankie and his friends as they strut around, playing ball games, bare chested, vividly capturing the balmy and sensual summer days.