At the Sea

While scheduling conflicts are certainly possible and some productions can’t easily spare their actors for an overseas jaunt, it never bodes well for a film when its entire cast declines to attend and promote its festival premiere. Kornél Mundruczó’s At the Sea stands as the weakest entry in the Competition lineup thus far, its place secured more by the names attached than its merits.

Amy Adams stars as Laura Baum, fresh out of rehab and struggling to re-adjust to family life in Cape Cod. Her teenage daughter resents Laura for having to shoulder adult responsibilities during her mother’s absence, and her younger son fears her, traumatised by the accident she caused while driving intoxicated. Laura, for her part, is frustrated at her husband’s (Murray Bartlett) decision to run interference with friends and colleagues, who were trying to contact her.

Much of the narrative feels like the creatives went through a check list of stations they had to traipse around: a shocking reveal that the protagonist’s abusive father is to blame for her compulsive behaviour; a stranger (Brett Goldstein), whom it is easier for Laura to confide in than her loved ones; dance as the only way for her to express herself. Strangely, Mundruczó wants to keep the viewer guessing whether or not Laura is actually staying sober, continually setting traps of temptation for his heroine.

The silver lining is that the stellar troupe he assembled possess the kind of skill that makes a bad performance quite unimaginable. Adams fights her way past stale metaphorical images of the sea and leans into the contradictions of this woman: she longs for a connection with her husband, but also feels cramped by him. When she reminisces about the “good drunk” she was, one can see in her delivery what she means by that: someone fun, lighthearted, not a violent drunk, like her father. Bartlett easily holds his own, even if given less bandwidth to play with. There is a levity brought by Dan Levy’s brief appearance, and some genuinely funny lines in the script manage to take off, but it feels too little, too late by that point.

At the Sea is buoyed by its cast, but weighed down with clichés and “been there, done that” arcs. None of the small bright spots breaking through the clouds are ever enough to fully convince the viewer that they are indeed watching a brand new release and not a recycled television rerun.