Beach Rats *** ½ / *****
Directed by: Eliza Hittman.
Written by: Eliza Hittman.
Starring: Harris Dickinson (Frankie), Madeline Weinstein (Simone), Kate Hodge (Donna), Neal Huff (Joe), Nicole Flyus (Carla), Frank Hakaj (Nick), David Ivanov (Alexei), Anton Selyaninov (Jesse), Harrison Sheehan (Jeremy), Douglas Everett Davis (Harry), Gabriel Gans (Eddie), Erik Potempa (Michael), Kris Eivers (Edgar), J. Stephen Brantley (Jersey).
Beach Rats has a lot in common with director Eliza Hittman’s debut film – It Felt Like Love – from a few years ago. Both films center on a teenage protagonist and spend a long, hot, sweaty summer with them, as they put themselves in dangerous situations, in order to fulfill some sort of sexual desire that they themselves can never really explain – or even admit to themselves. It Felt Like Love was about a 15 year old girl, who wants to be as sexually experienced as her best friend – and does stupid things to get there. Beach Rats is about Frankie (Harris Dickinson), who is about 19 – and gay, but cannot admit that to anyone – even himself. Yes, he goes onto a website called Brooklyn Boys, to chat with other men – most of them older – and often meets with them in real life for quick, rough sex. Yet, Frankie can barely utter the word gay when he’s with them – and he certainly can’t when he’s around his Neanderthal friends. They spend their days in their wife beater shirts, doing drugs, hanging at the local vape bar, and attending the same Coney Island fireworks every Friday.
As a writer/director Hittman prefers not a lot of dialogue and off-kilter, yet beautiful framing. Her camera captures these young bodies in all their muscle bound glory – admiring them in the same way the older men who meet up with Frankie do. Early in the film, Frankie meets Simone (Madeline Weinstein) – who picks him up, and the two start dating. Frankie has excuses when it comes time to perform though – and Simone isn’t really interesting in hearing about them. Their “relationship” isn’t built on communication – cannot be, as Frankie barely speaks – so it’s unsurprising when it doesn’t go anywhere. She calls him a fixer-upper, and says she needs newly renovated.
Frankie is like those fireworks that open and close the film. He says in the first scene – when Simone asks him what he thinks of them – that they were the same the week before, and the week before that, and the week before that, etc. They are stuck in a routine, and are not going to change. Frankie is stuck as well. He could unstick himself – of course. He is, after all, in New York City – so help for LGBTQ youth is available if he wants it. But in order to do that, he has to be willing to leave everything he knows behind. His friends certainly wouldn’t be accepting. Perhaps his mother (Kate Hodge) would be – but she’s sick of his lounging around, getting high, and not doing anything.
This is a great performance by Dickinson as Frankie – who has to do a lot, while saying practically nothing. He isn’t the outgoing asshole that his friends are – but he can do a not bad imitation of them when he needs to. I felt like It Felt Like Love perhaps let its lead character off the hook a little too easily in that film. Beach Rats doesn’t quite do that – but it also doesn’t hit as hard as I would have liked. Frankie isn’t too far gone to come – yet. But he’s on his way there.
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