THE STORY – After rehab, Laura returns to her family’s Cape Cod home. Once the face of her late father’s renowned dance company, she built an identity tethered to his legacy and the cost of growing up in his shadow. Laura’s functional alcoholism, long ignored by everybody, finally reached a breaking point after a drunk-driving accident with her young son in the car. Now sober, she comes home changed, but to a family unprepared for this. Her husband Martin welcomes her cautiously, torn between devotion and mistrust. Their teenage daughter, Josie, meets Laura with hostility, while her son, Felix, remains distant. Over several days by the sea, family moments become pressure points, revealing buried anger, financial strain, and the fragility of reconciliation. As Laura’s former colleagues push her to return to the career she abandoned, she confronts a deeper question: Who is she without the identity that once justified her self-destruction?
THE CAST – Amy Adams, Murray Bartlett, Chloe East, Brett Goldstein, Dan Levy, Jenny Slate, Redding L. Munsell & Rainn Wilson
THE TEAM – Kornél Mundruczó (Director) & Kata Wéber (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 112 Minutes
Hungarian director Kornél Mundruczó returns to English-language filmmaking for the first time since 2020’s “Pieces of a Woman.” His latest, an addiction recovery drama starring Amy Adams, falters from the very start. The dialogue is riddled with every cliché in the book, as the film deals with the fallout of Adams’ Laura returning to everyday life surrounded by judgmental people and functioning alcoholics.
Laura (Amy Adams) is the head of a renowned dance company; she took it over from her controlling, now-deceased father. Having been in a rehabilitation centre for many months, her friends and colleagues begin to wonder where she’s been. Her husband, Martin (Murray Barlett), told everyone that she’s been away in Bali, but when she returns, she quickly lets everyone know the truth. She is forced to adjust to life without alcohol, which in turn makes her question her life choices; is she really that passionate about dance? How can she be a better mother?
Pressure builds as the dance company’s funds have dwindled in her absence. All of her colleagues are on her like hounds trying to get her to return to the company. But will the pressure make her crack and reach for the bottle? There are other major problems in her life, including her relationship with her children. They are distant at first, with her youngest son dismissing her and asking for his sister to tuck him into bed. Her daughter seems to be following in her footsteps; she’s a talented dancer too, but has the same self-destructive tendencies that haunt her mum.
The best aspect of “At the Sea” is undoubtedly the flashbacks that showcase a young Laura either alone or with her abusive father. These scenes are dialogue-free, embrace a more expressive style of filmmaking, and are quite conceptual. “Lykke Li – I Follow Rivers” plays as young Laura, wearing retro headphones, walks down a barren street before interpretive dancers take over the frame. One by one, they dance to the music before revealing young Laura further down the road. The fluidity of this scene, like all the flashbacks, shows Mundruczó’s eye for the inventive, and it’s all the more frustrating that the drama in the present day is bland and shallow. There is more conveyed and expressed by the young actress than in any words Amy Adams says. It’s clearly a scripting problem.
Opening to the sound of drums and a close-up of Adams’ eyes, the camera pulls back to reveal a group of rehab patients playing percussive instruments. It’s a promising opening that instantly shows a woman in turmoil. Plagued with thoughts of alcohol and familial trauma, one would hope that what follows would be emotionally gripping and something to remember. However, Laura’s struggle is never anything more than surface-level pain that motivates her to amend things. It becomes too predictable that any emotional moment just rings hollow by the time it happens. Also, it’s naturally less interesting exploring upper-class struggles; it’s genuinely hard to feel sorry for the ultra-rich.
The casting choices here are a mystery that needs to be answered. Why are most of the supporting cast, in this so-called drama, comedic actors? That’s not to say comedians can’t play serious; that’s not true. But it’s an odd choice to have Rainn Wilson, Jenny Slate, and Brett Goldstein in the film. They really aren’t helped by the dire dialogue, which results in wooden performances, because what else could they do with such archetypal dross? Amy Adams is fine as Laura; her performance is good enough to carry the film somewhat, but, as aforementioned, she is outshone by her younger self in some striking dialogue-less scenes. Goldstein’s cameo is extremely strange; he is merely a plot device to distract Laura so that she can be labelled as irresponsible for abandoning her child, again. His character flies kites, a metaphor for freedom in the film that is hinted at before he shows up. His character is another example of how lazy the writing is.
“At the Sea” is let down by a shabby, hollow screenplay that can’t be saved by some of Hollywood’s top actors. Visually, the film isn’t particularly invigorating for the most part, but some artful flashbacks and neat editing elevate it from being completely bad. Ultimately, Mundruczó’s latest feels contrived and adds nothing new to the addiction recovery subgenre that Hollywood seems to be obsessed with.
