[6]

Writer/director Eliza Hittman takes us inside the secretive life of a teen boy trying to figure out if he’s straight or gay. He’s clearly attracted to men and hooks up with several older ones he meets online. But he’s also interested in at least trying to be straight, especially when a girl on the New Jersey boardwalk takes a liking to him. It’s not easy for him, though. And his good-for-nothing friends push him in all the wrong directions, including drug use. Things escalate a bit in the third act and we’re left to wonder whether this poor young man will ever have the courage to find himself.

I like that Hittman keeps the film relatively non-verbal. Relationships are painted in imagery and sound, and most importantly in close-up reaction shots. Harris Dickinson, as the main character, says so little but we’re able to infer a great deal through the 95-minutes we spend with him. It’s enough to hopefully help outsiders gather a glimmer of understanding into the painfully isolated world of the closeted gay male. Dickinson and all the supporting cast are incredibly naturalistic. There’s no acting going on here, which helps Hittman achieve a verite/documentary feeling. I thought about The 400 Blows several times while watching Beach Rats, and that’s not a bad thing. (Even the music reminded me of Truffaut’s film.)

Beach Rats is a film I hope the right people see. At my screening, I could tell the audience was predominantly gay, and I suspect many of them might have felt the same way I did — wary of a tragic ending. The film is nowhere near as cataclysmic as Boys Don’t Cry, but it does leave us on a note of bittersweet ambiguity. If a movie like this only preaches to the choir, the choir would rather have a happy ending. But if Beach Rats helps the heteronormative world loosen its grip on young men exploring their identity, that would be wonderful.