Trey Edward Shults has made only three feature films, but they’re all melodramas. 2015’s Krisha, adapted from his short film of the same name, was a straightforward story about a woman who returns to her family after a long absence for a drama-filled Thanksgiving. 2017’s It Comes at Night was more of a horror movie or psychological thriller but it was also about family at its core. His new film, Waves, about a middle-class black family in Florida, is his best melodrama yet.
Though it follows the same family throughout, it’s really two films in one. The first is a picture of Tyler’s (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) life as it falls apart. A smart and handsome young man whose wrestling skills are supposed to propel him into a good college, he’s thrown into crisis when his doctor explains that a chronic shoulder injury has effectively ended his career. Tyler’s future feels even shakier after his longtime girlfriend, Alexis (Alexa Demie), shares that she may be pregnant. From there, his life spirals–literally thanks to the way the camera constantly spins on a gimbal–out of control until coming to a shocking climax. For the rest of the film, his little sister Emily (Taylor Russell) becomes the focus as she and her family deal with the fallout of Tyler’s actions and she grows into a woman.
It’s a lot of ground to cover in a single film and as a result, key bits of backstory, like that Catharine (Renée Elise Goldsberry) is the kids’ stepmother, are tossed off in the middle, well after they would usually be shared. Indeed, the film is so focused on what’s happening in the moment that the character arcs can feel, if not rushed, then lacking in nuance. Luckily, the cast is filled with such talented performers that Shults mostly pulls it off.
Harrison Jr., who was brilliant in Julius Onah’s Luce earlier this year as another teen boy with issues, does staggering work here. In early scenes, we buy into Tyler’s perfect life because of the joy and confidence Harrison Jr. projects. When things start to unravel, we sympathize with his fear and sadness as Harrison Jr. shows not only how afraid Tyler is of disappointing his father (Sterling K. Brown), but how poorly his parents have prepared him to cope with adversity. Indeed, Harrison Jr. is so strong that the film is nearly halfway over before the audience really begins to question whether Tyler may be kind of a bastard. There are hints of it in the way he reacts to Alexis’s news or the way he takes out his emotions on others, but it’s not until the event at the film’s center occurs that the film really forces the audience and characters to interrogate Tyler’s core goodness.
It would be wrong to reveal the shocking event at Waves’ center, but the result is that the film suddenly switches protagonists from Tyler to Emily. Harrison Jr. is a tough act to follow for any actor–particularly one so young–but both Russell and Emily are exactly the subdued, loving contrast the film needs in its second half. At first, for both Emily and her parents, that entails dealing with the shame of being both associated with her brother and her own guilt that she couldn’t do more to help him. Things start to change, though, when a sweet boy from school, Luke (Lucas Hedges in the kind of soft sweetheart role that he could probably do in his sleep by now), begins to flirt with her. It’s hard to talk about where that love and Emily’s story goes without spoiling it, but Waves becomes a movie about the way love can heal wounds and how coping with a family tragedy can eventually lead to compassion and greater understanding.
That said, while the story itself is integral to what makes Waves so impactful, Shults’s stylistic choices are just as meaningful. This is the second film this year to repeatedly change the aspect ratio after Noah Hawley’s Lucy in the Sky and just as in that film, each change corresponds to a change in a character’s emotional state. At the beginning, when Tyler’s life is carefree and filled with promise, the image is wide. During the pivotal event, when Tyler’s story comes to a crescendo, the image suddenly contracts, adding a suffocating sense of claustrophobia to an already unbearably tense scene. The image remains limited as the film switches to Emily, as she and the rest of the family come to terms with the way Tyler’s life has fallen apart. But as she climbs out of that sadness and falls in love with Luke, the image suddenly becomes wide again, an expression her blossoming into a woman through their romance.
While some will perhaps view that shifting aspect ratio as an unnecessary or distracting affectation, it’s also impossible to deny that Drew Daniels’ cinematography is one of the film’s best elements. The vibrancy of the colors is quite simply breathtaking. Whether it’s the gorgeous pink and blue sunset Alexis and Tyler admire on the beach, the visceral wrestling matches or even the sterile, unfriendly mood of a hospital room, every image feels like a heightened reality, both more beautiful and terrible than our own. While the film’s beauty is almost distracting in its intensity, it also fits perfectly with the story’s heightened tone.
Waves is basically an art house melodrama. Its character arcs are often over-the-top and occasionally border on misery porn, but its heady depiction of love in all forms is equally potent. And while it may not ultimately work as a picture of real life, it’s also impossible to dismiss. There’s truth in what Shults presents and even if the events are extreme, the emotions driving them feel quotidian.
