I was fortunate enough to see a working copy of Alejandro Adams's film Around the Bay, which is a quietly powerful, poignant film about many things, including an estranged father and daughter who come together briefly after some years to establish a tender, tentative peace. The movie features terrific performances, and follows the rhythms of a family on the verge of breaking apart. There are many movies whose stylistic flourishes serve only as distractions, but in Around the Bay such touches, especially the interplay of diegetic and non-diegetic sound, only serve to deepen the mood and capture the fragmented relationships.

The best scenes unfold naturalistically, as when the daughter meets an older, kind, accomplished Russian gentleman. They spend some time in a bookstore, talking and flirting in a scene that has elements of the French New Wave and even Lost in Translation. The film's ending is bittersweet and powerful, filmed outside as family and friends share food and wine in the setting sun.

The look of the film is crisp and clean, and the light is spectacular. In some ways, it is the opposite of a mumblecore film: there is a clarity to the proceedings that's hard to define, but that lodges the film in your brain. The film's ending, as the sound cuts out and we see the father looking into the distance, is as powerful as any moment on film I've seen in recent years.

[Reprinted from Digital Poetics]