This is exactly the kind of movie I normally like. Artsy and pretentious, it has almost nothing to do with plot and everything to do with feeling. Gorgeously photographed on 16mm with the trippy lights of Coney Island in the background, Beach Rats feels like a dream that's not quite a nightmare yet but is both erotic and deeply uncomfortable. A claustrophobic snapshot of a life on the brink, the film is a character study that never quite makes the cut, but remains fascinating as an exercise.
Harris Dickinson plays Frankie, the teenager with apparently no responsibilities, enjoying his life on the Brooklyn summer beach. He escapes his mother and sister by hanging out with his male friends and doing a lot of drugs, walking around and sulking shirtless to gawk at girls, and playing ball. By night, he holes himself up in his basement room and logs into online sex-chatrooms via webcam with older men. He'll occasionally meet up with them in the shadowy recesses of the beach for hookups and drug deals. While he'd never identify as "gay" or "bi" or whatever he might deem cool, Frankie doesn't seem to feel the fear or constraints of a typical queer protagonist.
Then again, he doesn't seem to feel much of anything. It's all a lovely film, but there's nothing to sink your teeth into. We've seen half of this before (done better, too), and the other half doesn't make you interested enough to care. When the older men lasciviously gaze at Frankie's smooth, muscular body, you get the distinct impression the director is mocking her own audience. It's all a meditation on voyeurism and we are complicit. I'm all for objectifying male bodies for a change, but also can we make it consensual and legal and not creepy?
It doesn't help that the dialogue in this film is so sparse and the actors so stoic. For example, Frankie's girlfriend get upset that he blows her off and doesn't open up. We don't feel sorry for him because he's an asshole. And then he comes back multiple times -- while she's at work -- to whine and beg her to give him another chance. It's pathetic. I was also totally turned off by his drug consumption, partly because it results in a climactic hookup gone horribly wrong. But also partly because I'm tired of watching movies about unrequited queer desires that marry stupid characters to bad situations where nothing will end well.
Then again, as an exercise in loneliness and longing, the film is undeniably beautiful to watch. It provocatively suggests that longing is both agonizing and pleasurable, and that longing can be at least partially assuaged by watching. Too bad the characters are all jerks that I didn't really want to watch.
IMDb: Beach Rats
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