Beach Rats (2017)

Despite the musical glamour and glitter, Saturday Night Fever was a realistic sociological study of working-class youth in Brooklyn in the late 1970s, anchored by the powerful and star-making performance of John Travolta. As I was watching Beach Rats earlier today, I realized that it could be the Saturday Night Fever of 2017, with a gay theme instead of the song-and-dance routines; a realistic sociological study of working-class youth in Brooklyn in the late 2010s, anchored by the powerful and star-making performance of Harris Dickinson.

Dickinson, a young Londoner, who has entered the film world in 2013 as the director, writer, and editor of the short film Who Cares, has really broken through with Beach Rats. He is already nominated for Breakthrough Actor in the Gotham Independent Film Awards and for Best Male Lead in the Independent Spirit Awards. Also, he has already appeared in 3 films that are in post-production and will be released presently, plus a high-profile TV series that will begin broadcasting in January. If nothing unexpected happens, Harris Dickinson is destined for big things.

The writer and director of Beach Rats, Eliza Hittman, was born and raised in Brooklyn - and she knows her subject well. Beach Rats is her second feature film and it has already brought her the Best Director award at Sundance.

The film has a 78% Metascore and holds an 82% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, while most reviews are enthusiastic: Guy Lodge wrote in Variety: "Writer-director Eliza Hittman has a sensitive ear for the way adolescents reveal themselves through evasion: It’s a tension crucial to this anxious, tactile, profoundly sad study of a young man’s journey of sexual self-discovery and self-betrayal," while The Hollywood Reporter's David Rooney was also impressed: "Eliza Hittman's second feature is very much the work of a filmmaker with her own distinctive voice, combining moody poetry with textural sensuality to evoke the dangerous recklessness that often accompanies sexual discovery."

The film's hero, played by Harris Dickinson as Marlon Brando's Stanely Kowalski but with a tight control on his emotions, is an aimless teenager on the outer edges of Brooklyn; his family life is bleak: his father is dying of cancer, his mother is trying to understand her son and his younger sister is in the process of discovering her own sexuality.

His life is separated into two compartments, sealed air-tight from each other, or so he thinks. He spends most of his time with his three equally aimless and frustrated teenage friends, smoking weed, popping pills and doing a lot of empty macho posturing. Then there's his other life, searching for older men in chat rooms and precariously hooking up. When a girl starts flirting with him, he feels uneasy and threatened, yet he also recognizes the benefit of having a "girlfriend", since he doesn't intend to come out to his family and friends anytime soon. It works for a while, but his girlfriend's sexual demands seem to be an insurmountable obstacle for him.

His need to share his truth is eventually wearing him down: Early on he asks his "girlfriend" what does she think of two men making out. Her answer is prohibitive to any more conversation on the subject. His mother senses that he has something weighing him down and tries to make him open up about it, but he is not ready to come out to her. So, he decides to turn to his friends, opening up to them in a clumsy way that he feels will protect him from their rejection. In doing so, he ends up betraying his own integrity. Will things work out for him eventually? The film's open ending lets us be the judge of that. Yet it ends in fireworks...

This is a trailer for the film:

This is another trailer:

And for those of you who can't gain access to the film in any other way (an LGBT+ film festival in Kampala, Uganda, has been closed down by the local police only two days ago), this is the film in its entirety. Well, there are a few seconds missing here and there - and you don't get to see the final fireworks and the closing credits. There are also Spanish subtitles that you can activate if you so please: