Review: Drowning Dry

Official synopsis: To celebrate Lukas'  (Paulius Markevicius) victory at the martial arts tournament and Tomas' (Giedrius Kiela) birthday party, their wives, sisters Juste (Agne Kaktaite) and Ernesta (Gelmine Glemzaite) organize a weekend at the country house with their families. Then the two families must navigate a near tragedy that occurs. 

Lithuania's entry for Best International Film at the Oscars earlier this year now finally sees its U.S release. I'm not familiar with director/cinematographer Laurynas Bareisa prior work. Here, he takes us through stages of grief. Not always linear, not always cohesive, but real all the same. The film jumps back and forth between time making you question what really happened and how the family was driven apart.

This is a film for patient people. You might think that's an odd thing to say about a film with a runtime of 88 minutes, but Bareisa streeeeeeeeeeeeeetches some scenes to the maximum. I actually went back after I finished it and played a few of them at 2x speed and they still felt like they went on too long. This is the film's biggest hurdle because with all the time we spend lingering, I felt like we could've spent that getting to know the characters a bit better. We know them as archetypes, but I would've liked to know them as humans. Especially since this film does such a great job of making the main cast feel like an actual family.

I will say, this is one of the few instances were a nonlinear time line makes sense. I found it a very profound way to tell this story. Even though some scenes dragged on for too long, others were very engaging and sometimes it makes you completely re-think a scene you saw before after you get a flash forward later.

This is my intro into Lithuania's film scene, and even with my gripes against the pacing, It feels like a good place to start.

Grade: B