Per Fay's choice, saw the movie Breath last night. It is a) a surf film and b) a male adolescent coming of age story.
Unlike some other surf films I've seen, this one gives you a lot more feeling of being in the water - not as a heroic conquerer, but more being tossed at the mercy of the forces of nature and "do I really want to get into that roiling mess?" The time spent in that ambivalence is greater than the time spent showing someone gracefully carving a wave. There was a point where Fay said "I can't watch this" and that wasn't about someone wiping out on a wave, but someone deciding to jump into water where they could very well drown.
The cinematography and Australian scenery are classically stunning; the water is displayed in more moods than most surf films. The scenes could have been anywhere along the coast, but happened to be around Peaceful Bay Western Australia; turf of author Tim Winton. The coming of age part is described by Junkee's review as "...A Movie Made For Middle-Aged White Guys And Literally No One Else" Awww... it wasn't that bad, but as a slightly post-middle-age White Guy, it's hard for me to judge. I was a bit disturbed at the inclusion of a dangerous sex kink, but it did help fill out the melancholic depth of one of the characters, as well as the overall sometimes sadness of life.
I was wondering how much was actually in the book; Variety says "...the sexual initiation feels a tad formulaic in narrative terms, even if Winton labors a bit too hard to avoid cliche, introducing a kinky aspect to Eva’s neediness that perhaps introduces more grown-up mess than this story really needs." Although since Winton wrote both the book and contributed to the screenplay, that still doesn't reveal whether the book has a more integrated plotline. In spite of the film being set somewhere radically different from my youth, the interplay of characters was very familiar and, yes for an, um, older white guy, provoked reminiscing. I had to explain to Fay what BB guns were (not from the movie; from my childhood). Sidenote: I think the Junkee review was written by someone who has no appreciation for water.
