La Dernière Vague

The movie has hundreds of time jumps backwards and forwards, it is confusing.

The movie shows the last days of an homophobic and somewhat psychotic beach lifeguard and the huge fear to recognize his own homosexuality, despite he always seems to flirt with the idea. His best friend is the shy "hung" dude, who obeys all what the homophobic says.

There are many gay bashing scenes. The gay character is mostly employed as a punch-bag.

There is just one nudity scene where we can see someone's butt at a distance, and their hands hiding the genitals.

The final beach scene has many continuity errors.

The most cinematic looking Australian film I've seen, considering it was dirt cheap to make that just shows the ingenuity and resourcefulness of the filmmakers to keep us engaged and not get wound up on the little things. The film is shot in an unconventional, hypnotic style similar to (good) Terence Malick films and contains moments of nightmarish surrealism. The audience is successfully implanted into Len's mind state, with his nihilistic viewpoints burrowing under our skin and confronting us with the messy, confusing playground that is life. The absurdness and harmful elements of the idea of masculinity (bullying, peer pressure, risk taking behaviour) are hurtled towards us like asteroids, like all the memorable films, it doesn't cutely slip in its message with smugness but delivers it with sledgehammer force. The film is ugly, unpleasant, and unflinching, but that is exactly the point of it so those really can't be used as complaints. If it made you sick, it has done it's job. Homophobia is not a cute issue and should never be treated as such. There are sprinkles of dark humour in it too for those who need a bit of relief, but you won't have much time to breathe, it will pull you back in before you can. If you want to challenge yourself and your viewpoints, give it a watch, make sure it's on a big screen too.

Strong acting and good-looking shirtless lifeguards running around in speedos cannot redeem this sadistic mess of a film.

I didn't need to see this. No redemption, growth or meaningful message here. You already know there are sick people out there that take their personal issues out on others with cruelty and abuse ...but do you really need to see it? I found this similar to watching someone slowly torturing their adoring loyal dog.

If you want to see some hot guys and a quick penis shot; simply watch some internet porn instead! You won't feel so empty, upset and emotionally drained afterwards.

The violence . It seems the only theme and easy to define it as pretext for a non story film, in which the punches, hate, vulnerability as root of terrible angry are the only pieces.

But Drown is about what lives under violence. Experiences, need of respect, appreciation and love, the friendship as refuge and the toxic but so familiar manner to define yourself as man. Sure, a significant aspect is homophobia , in many forms . But the great thing is just the fair performances of main actors and the realism created by discontinous telling.

A film about vulnerability and thirst of affection more than about violence itself.

Shame to see a reasonable cast wasted by truly awful writing and directing. This film takes a lens to homophobia and completely pushes it into an over the top, melodramatic, badly edited, annoying mess.

The sad part is the cast seemed reasonably good at acting but could have done well with anything else, even the most simplistic story would have allowed them to shine. Less is definitely more in this case and it needed way less.

It really is a bad movie and an example of what happens when someone tries too hard and doesn't have anyone around them to say stop, this isn't working--it's unrealistic, exaggerated for effect and needs a rewrite. Awful ending too.