Drowning Dry

Original title: Seses

Directed by: Laurinas Bareiša

Country: Lithuania

Length: 88 min.

Year: 2024

Premiere: Locarno Film Festival 2024

BEST DIRECTOR & BEST PERFORMANCE - LOCARNO 2024

Synopsis: the families of two sisters vacation together, as the events take a tragic turn.

RATING: 3/5

REVIEW

Dry drowning is a medical condition, in which the victim risks to pass away with symptoms of drowning, hours after having been submerged into water, due to a drop entering the lungs. This horrific is the basis of Laurinas Bareiša's second feature film both in its form and its content.

Much like with Pilgrims, Bareiša minimises the exposition, leaving clues and hints to the viewer as to what happens off-screen, or the backstory. If Pilgrims is a vorticating journey that destabilises by the continuous change of locations, in Drowning Dry this is achieved through the syncopatic non-linear structure that occasionally rewinds to some events, or jumps forward in time unexpectedly, leading astray from any expectations that could be deduced from the previous scenes, disorienting. Drowning Dry constantly presents possibilities, implies them, confutates them and introduces new elements to decode.

Additionally, the film does not refrain from toying with the perception on a more existential level: a repetition ensures a feeling of déjà vu, the change of a song in a key moment could spur an unquenchable  urge to rewind (if seeing the film in a screening room) to see what else is different in the content of the frames; this effect is further heightened by Bareiša's very methodic cinematography: a lack of depth-of-field that results in a flat perspective, at the same time, a constant distance of the camera from the characters, never seen from closer than medium shots, a very static framing, with sporadic movements captured in the performances but practically absent camera movements. The result is a kind of cinematography that blends in the film seemlessly. With this film, Bareiša estabilishes these technical aspects as his signature storytelling elements.

Whereas in form and structure it is a very well constructed film, it might have a certain issue with its calibration. Much like with Pilgrims, Drowning Dry essentially requires a total involvement of the viewer, something that proves to be extremely challenging with films that have such a slow pace and a purposefully minimalistic visual language. While the stories of both the films by Bareiša could be tense, full of authentic mystery, the films remain somewhat dry, and do not render entirely this inherent tension. As a result, they might not produce the engagement that is required for their full appreciation.