A film by Kornél Mundruczó
With: Amy Adams, Murray Bartlett, Chloe East, Brett Goldstein, Dan Levy, Jenny Slate, Rainn Wilson, Henry Eikenberry, Naheem Garcia
After a long rehabilitation, Laura returns to her family at their beach holiday home where she has to readjust to the complicated life she left behind. Now she is forced to face the following next chapter of her life without the career that gave her fame, fortune and, most importantly, identity.
Our rate : ★★
Kornél Mundruczó paints a very bourgeois portrait of a woman, a former professional dancer, who is trying to rebuild her life after years of gradually losing herself and drowning in alcohol. He entrusts this demanding role to Amy Adams, who is unrecognizable and, on the whole, very accurate and convincing, in order to stay as close as possible to reality, to the very particular psychological state of someone who wakes up with multiple complex feelings intertwining within them: shame, anger, fear, the desire to move forward, to rebuild oneself and one’s surroundings, but also pain, temptation, the desire to give up, and melancholy. This is undoubtedly Mundruczó’s most psychological film, surprising us with some interesting moments of insight, a patient pace, and a sensitivity that we didn’t know he possessed—the gesture seems sincere, well-researched, and even personal—the antithesis of the more metaphysical reflections in his previous films, which were paradoxically more down-to-earth but less in touch with reality. However, this is not enough to make it a very good film, a film that could aspire to feature in the awards at a major festival. This story, however sincere and universal it may be, lacks resonance and has already been dealt with forcefully by many directors, at a time when some believe that cinema should remain silent on political issues. Unfortunately, the story of At the Sea seems to have come at the wrong moment, when there was so much to say. By setting it in an unreal world, in a luxurious house built on a fortune made by the Danse familiale foundation, it asks good questions about family heritage, the possibility for a hyper-ambitious person to sacrifice their family life, or even destroy it psychologically, in order to devote their entire life to very high artistic ambitions, but also to seek recognition, success, and achievement at all costs. However, he poses these questions to an audience that, in the vast majority of cases, will find it difficult to recognize themselves, identify with them, or even share their concerns. In other, less tumultuous and less anxious times, his intimate patina and his bitter yet optimistic outlook (reconstruction is still possible) would have seemed more powerful to us.