‘At the Sea’ Review: Amy Adams’ Commitment Can’t Save a Recovery Drama as Immediately Forgettable as Its Title
Drop the definite article and you have a more apt title for “At the Sea,” a drab and laborious recovery drama with a mystifying amount of major-league talent behind it. The second English-language feature from Hungarian virtuoso Kornél Mundruczó, it promises on paper a similarly potent female character study to his first: 2020’s “Pieces of a Woman,” a harrowing but humane study of trauma from stillbirth that handed the role of a lifetime to Vanessa Kirby, who duly picked up an Oscar nomination for her wrenching turn. Based on that film alone, one can see why any A-list actress would take a meeting with Mundruczó, and so it is that Amy Adams headlines this story of a wealthy mother, wife and artist struggling to regain control of her life after six months in rehab for alcoholism.
For 20-odd years, Adams has been one of Hollywood’s most reliably committed and conscientious performers. That reputation takes no hit in “At the Sea,” which she approaches with more seriousness and brittle, tremulous vulnerability than the thin, superficial script (by Mundruczó’s personal and professional partner Kata Wéber) strictly merits. But she can’t find or conjure much vital inner life in her character Laura Baum, a celebrated dancer and choreographer whom addiction has distanced from her family and artistry alike, but whose turmoil the film prefers to articulate through thudding dialogue and wispy, oblique flashbacks rather than any more searching physical study. Shot in mid-2024, the film has the air of having been chopped and changed several times over toward its final unwieldy form, premiering in competition at this year’s Berlinale.
Supplemented by such familiar faces as Dan Levy, Brett Goldstein and Jenny Slate in the ensemble, Adams’ presence here may be enough to secure interest in “At the Sea” from indie distributors or streaming platforms. It’s hard, however, to imagine much of an audience turning out for a film both this familiar and this emotionally gauzy — even Adams’ last vehicle, the little-seen Searchlight/Hulu release “Nightbitch,” had a more compelling commercial hook. (That generic title doesn’t help, given we’ve also seen “By the Sea” and “On the Sea” in recent years: We may be running out of fresh prepositions for this particular formulation.)
The sea in question laps whisperingly onto Cape Cod, beigely shot by Yorick Le Saux, where Laura and her painter husband Martin (Murray Bartlett) own a sprawling, gorgeously appointed summer estate inherited from her late father Ivan — himself a renowned choreographer who founded the world-famous dance company that she now directs. Or did, until a DUI car accident with her young son Felix (Redding L. Munsell) in the vehicle forced her to reckon with her drinking problem, and check into a remote recovery facility for half a year. That left Martin and their teenage daughter Josie (Chloe East) to hold down the fort in her absence, while colleagues and board members were given only a vague explanation regarding her sudden hiatus.
On Laura’s later-than-promised return, Josie is unsurprisingly embittered and Felix (shaken but uninjured in the crash) nervously distant, while the cracks that were already present in her marriage when she left have only widened. There’s dramatic promise in this nervy, walking-on-eggshells domestic setup, but “At the Sea” is frequently waylaid by far less interesting tensions in Laura’s social and professional life — with her douchebag chief investor George (Rainn Wilson) threatening to withdraw his funding, her neurotic assistant Peter (Levy) desperate to bring her back to work, and her best friend, George’s ex-wife Debby (Slate, wasted in a flimsy part), reclaiming her life after beating cancer.
At best, this is the stuff of primetime soap opera, written and played in a broad, banal register a world apart from the intense, stricken disorientation that Adams brings to her character. Alcoholism is not in itself a rich person’s problem, even if six months of luxury rehab is very much a rich person’s solution — there’s plenty to sympathize with in Laura’s plight, and in Adams’ withdrawn performance.
But “At the Sea” struggles mightily to make us care about the future of her dance company, or indeed the potential sale of her enviable beach house, while more high-stakes shards of narrative backstory — in particular, what appears to have been an abusive relationship with her father — are gestured at only in short, angular flashes to the past, resting heavily on the solemnly anguished expression of Laura’s childhood self (silently played by the director’s own daughter).
Sometimes spliced into proceedings by editors Dávid Jancsó and Ilka Janka Nagy with blink-like brevity, these flashbacks seemingly connote the intrusive thoughts and blackouts of an addled, recuperating mind. As such, they’re one of the few striking formal gambits in an otherwise surprisingly prosaic outing from Mundruczó, a long way from the kinetic stylings of “White God,” or even the breathless, pressurized atmosphere of “Pieces of a Woman.” The most poetic flourish here, meanwhile, is a whiff: an intuitive, interpretive mother-daughter dance sequence on the beach that prompts more cringe than catharsis. At one point, Slate’s character offers a curious toast “to temporary beauty and new starts”: Mundruczó has created some enduring beauty in his career, so needn’t drink to the temporary stuff, but a fresh start would be a fine idea.
For 20-odd years, Adams has been one of Hollywood’s most reliably committed and conscientious performers. That reputation takes no hit in “At the Sea,” which she approaches with more seriousness and brittle, tremulous vulnerability than the thin, superficial script (by Mundruczó’s personal and professional partner Kata Wéber) strictly merits. But she can’t find or conjure much vital inner life in her character Laura Baum, a celebrated dancer and choreographer whom addiction has distanced from her family and artistry alike, but whose turmoil the film prefers to articulate through thudding dialogue and wispy, oblique flashbacks rather than any more searching physical study. Shot in mid-2024, the film has the air of having been chopped and changed several times over toward its final unwieldy form, premiering in competition at this year’s Berlinale.
Supplemented by such familiar faces as Dan Levy, Brett Goldstein and Jenny Slate in the ensemble, Adams’ presence here may be enough to secure interest in “At the Sea” from indie distributors or streaming platforms. It’s hard, however, to imagine much of an audience turning out for a film both this familiar and this emotionally gauzy — even Adams’ last vehicle, the little-seen Searchlight/Hulu release “Nightbitch,” had a more compelling commercial hook. (That generic title doesn’t help, given we’ve also seen “By the Sea” and “On the Sea” in recent years: We may be running out of fresh prepositions for this particular formulation.)
The sea in question laps whisperingly onto Cape Cod, beigely shot by Yorick Le Saux, where Laura and her painter husband Martin (Murray Bartlett) own a sprawling, gorgeously appointed summer estate inherited from her late father Ivan — himself a renowned choreographer who founded the world-famous dance company that she now directs. Or did, until a DUI car accident with her young son Felix (Redding L. Munsell) in the vehicle forced her to reckon with her drinking problem, and check into a remote recovery facility for half a year. That left Martin and their teenage daughter Josie (Chloe East) to hold down the fort in her absence, while colleagues and board members were given only a vague explanation regarding her sudden hiatus.
On Laura’s later-than-promised return, Josie is unsurprisingly embittered and Felix (shaken but uninjured in the crash) nervously distant, while the cracks that were already present in her marriage when she left have only widened. There’s dramatic promise in this nervy, walking-on-eggshells domestic setup, but “At the Sea” is frequently waylaid by far less interesting tensions in Laura’s social and professional life — with her douchebag chief investor George (Rainn Wilson) threatening to withdraw his funding, her neurotic assistant Peter (Levy) desperate to bring her back to work, and her best friend, George’s ex-wife Debby (Slate, wasted in a flimsy part), reclaiming her life after beating cancer.
At best, this is the stuff of primetime soap opera, written and played in a broad, banal register a world apart from the intense, stricken disorientation that Adams brings to her character. Alcoholism is not in itself a rich person’s problem, even if six months of luxury rehab is very much a rich person’s solution — there’s plenty to sympathize with in Laura’s plight, and in Adams’ withdrawn performance.
But “At the Sea” struggles mightily to make us care about the future of her dance company, or indeed the potential sale of her enviable beach house, while more high-stakes shards of narrative backstory — in particular, what appears to have been an abusive relationship with her father — are gestured at only in short, angular flashes to the past, resting heavily on the solemnly anguished expression of Laura’s childhood self (silently played by the director’s own daughter).
Sometimes spliced into proceedings by editors Dávid Jancsó and Ilka Janka Nagy with blink-like brevity, these flashbacks seemingly connote the intrusive thoughts and blackouts of an addled, recuperating mind. As such, they’re one of the few striking formal gambits in an otherwise surprisingly prosaic outing from Mundruczó, a long way from the kinetic stylings of “White God,” or even the breathless, pressurized atmosphere of “Pieces of a Woman.” The most poetic flourish here, meanwhile, is a whiff: an intuitive, interpretive mother-daughter dance sequence on the beach that prompts more cringe than catharsis. At one point, Slate’s character offers a curious toast “to temporary beauty and new starts”: Mundruczó has created some enduring beauty in his career, so needn’t drink to the temporary stuff, but a fresh start would be a fine idea.