One of the real struggles for any filmmaker is figuring out what to show and what to withhold. And, trusting your audience can be particularly difficult when dealing with heavier subject matter. Drowning Dry, the second feature from Lithuanian filmmaker, Laurynas Bareisa, is meticulous in the way it reveals and reserves, using a non-linear format to keep the audience in the dark for much of the film’s runtime, a tactic that will either frustrate or engage you. In doing so, it gives the audience time to sit in both discomfort and uncertainty, taking stock of what’s truly important in the narrative and for the characters. I’m not sure it’s something every filmmaker could get away with, but Bareisa isn’t ‘every filmmaker’. No, he’s much more than that.
The two families explored in this picture are connected by the two matriarchs, Ernesta (Gelmine Glemzaite) and Juste (Agne Kaktaite), sisters who also share a generational home where everyone spends time together on holiday. Their respective husbands add an underlying hyper-masculine competitiveness to almost everything they do, one being a mixed martial arts fighter, and the other a somewhat emasculated man-child. When an ‘incident’ occurs that affects both families, we skip forward in time, some characters now missing, and are forced to put the pieces together of just what happened on holiday between the two families.
Drowning Dry reminded me of a lot of other films and filmmakers. Christian Petzold comes to mind, particularly his most recent film, Afire, another masterclass in withholding. Ruben Ostlund also comes to mind, his film, Force Majeure an obvious comparison. But, based on the sheer confidence of the storytelling, the film it most reminded me of was Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight. We spent the whole first act of that film with Mahershala Ali’s character as the grounding force, only to enter the second act with his pronounced absence, with Jenkins taking his time in revealing what happened. Drowning Dry employs this technique a couple of different times, and it packs the same sort of power, though on a far less emotionally devastating scale.
There’s nothing flashy about Drowning Dry. The film is shot, mostly, with extended single take shots where characters drift in and out of frame. The color palette is muted. Everything is scaled down to match the lives its characters are living. Even the performances are grounded, with that unmistakable Lithuanian sensibility that relies less on emotion and more on logic. Even at times when characters are in a heightened state, they’re handling it in a very non-histrionic way. Take, for example, early on in the film when Ernesta is in the locker room after her husband’s fight. She’s not upset because she was worried about his safety. She’s upset because this has become her life, and it’s not the life she ever had any intention of living.
What I appreciated most about the film was its dissection of relationships, how the early excitement and energy morphs into complacency, and how people are required to change to sustain them. When people refuse to change, those relationships start to fall apart. The film also takes a deceptively complicated look at male/male dynamics, the toxic masculinity that can only be compounded when martial arts are involved, and how in-laws seem to always be attempting to one-up each other. Who has the best kids? Who has the most money? In some ways, Drowning Dry owes a debt to the 1980’s comedy, The Great Outdoors. There might not be any MMA afoot, but there’s a bare-assed grizzly bear, and a lot of similar themes.
Rating: ***1/2/***** (opens July 18th in limited release via Dekanalog)
