Waves

Trey Edward Shults makes claus­tro­pho­bic fam­i­ly dra­mas of Shake­spear­i­an pro­por­tions – films that thrust dif­fi­cult indi­vid­u­als bound by blood into con­fined spaces and allow chaos to reign. Spiky, dis­cor­dant music and close quar­ters cam­er­a­work add to that sink­ing feel­ing, and his lat­est, the tumul­tuous Waves, is no dif­fer­ent, although it’s undoubt­ed­ly his most ambi­tious project yet.

Against the back­drop of the Flori­da coast, high school senior Tyler Williams (Kelvin Har­ri­son Jr) lives a seem­ing­ly charmed life. He has an ador­ing girl­friend, a spot on the school wrestling team and a com­fort­able mid­dle-class lifestyle, despite his father Ronald’s stern and some­times over­bear­ing pres­ence in his life. But suc­cess starts to slip out of Tyler’s grasp fol­low­ing a dev­as­tat­ing dis­cov­ery that threat­ens his care­ful­ly mapped-out future.

With the weight of the world on his shoul­ders, Tyler’s col­lapse comes with dis­as­trous, vio­lent con­se­quences which have far-reach­ing impli­ca­tions for those close to him. In the film’s sec­ond half, the focus shifts to Tyler’s younger sis­ter Emi­ly (Tay­lor Rus­sell), as she nav­i­gates the fall­out from her brother’s actions as well as a blos­som­ing romance with awk­ward, adorable Luke (Lucas Hedges), who’s also bat­tling his own demons.

When ini­tial­ly announced, Waves was rumoured to be a musi­cal, and that’s sort of true. No one breaks into song and dance, but the film is pow­ered by a con­stant rhythm which emanates from an eclec­tic sound­track that ranges from Dinah Washington’s ​‘What A Dif­fer­ence A Day Makes’ to Radiohead’s ​‘True Love Waits’, by way of Ani­mal Col­lec­tive, Glenn Miller, Frank Ocean and Kanye West.

It’s as eclec­tic as any teenager’s Spo­ti­fy account, with a song for every sit­u­a­tion, emo­tion and mem­o­ry. Trent Reznor and Atti­cus Ross pro­vide som­bre piano instru­men­tals to fill the gaps, adding to the film’s cool cre­den­tials, but it’s the pop­u­lar music which pow­ers the narrative.

Com­par­isons seem like­ly between Waves and HBO’s recent teen dra­ma Eupho­ria (an A24 co-pro­duc­tion), and they do share the same DNA: bright colours; music as mes­sage; teenagers in nev­erend­ing freefall. And yet for all its pol­ish, this is unmis­tak­ably a Trey Edward Shults film in its inter­ro­ga­tion of par­ent-child rela­tion­ships. Tyler is weighed down by his father’s expec­ta­tions and, lat­er, by Emi­ly due to his reliance on her as a con­fi­dant. Ster­ling K Brown is a stern par­ent strug­gling to keep it all togeth­er, and when he final­ly breaks, it’s gen­uine­ly moving.

The film is not with­out fault – the expe­ri­ence of being a black mid­dle-class fam­i­ly in present-day Amer­i­ca is reduced to a sin­gle line from father to son (“We are not afford­ed the lux­u­ry of being aver­age”) and the ques­tion about whether nature or nur­ture is the cat­a­lyst behind the tragedy at the film’s heart lingers. But a big­ger theme emerges: what can, or should, we for­give when it comes to fam­i­ly, and how do we let go of anger before it con­sumes us?

Per­haps this is the only devi­a­tion from Shults’ past work. Waves, for all the heart­break, all the sound and fury, is a love sto­ry, hope­ful despite hurt. It’s a demand­ing, ener­getic crea­ture – per­haps even a lit­tle sprawl­ing. But it’s unde­ni­ably tender.