Sun-Kissed Cinema
To many, the beach is first and foremost a destination for fancy-free summer fun; a place to unwind and recharge—but not to the filmmakers in this collection. Suspicions accrete at the water’s edge in "Pacifiction" (2022), Albert Serra’s masterful, Tahiti-set tale of postcolonial intrigue, while sex and murder entwine on the shorelines of both Alain Guirardie’s erotic thriller "Stranger by the Lake" (2013) and, to utterly different effect, the inspired camp throwback "Psycho Beach Party" (2000). Meanwhile, in Sky Hopinka’s experimental documentary "Malni—Towards the Ocean, Towards the Shore" (2020), the meeting of different elements anchors the mythology of the Pacific Northwest’s Chinookan people. With natural disaster looming and ill-advised romances brewing, won’t you drop by for a dip? The water’s fine…
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Psycho Beach Party
Directed by Robert Lee King | 96 mins | 2000
The wholesome genre of 1950s beach movies gets a demented camp makeover in the parodic, perky-paletted story of Chicklet (Lauren Ambrose), a teenager who becomes a suspect in a serial killer investigation because of her multiple personalities. Screenwr... -
Woman on the Beach
Directed by Hong Sangsoo | 127 mins | 2006
Deploying another of Hong’s beguiling twice-told narratives, Woman on the Beach begins with the tale of a creatively blocked filmmaker and his affair with the girlfriend of his friend and sometime collaborator at a coastal resort, then follows the filmm... -
Stranger by the Lake
Directed by Alain Guiraudie | 100 mins | 2013
Lauded and laureled at Cannes, Guiradie’s understated, simmeringly sensual thriller explores the proximity of Eros and Thanatos in an idyllic, lakeside nude beach/cruising spot—shot for maximum pastoral splendor by DP Claire Mathon—where regular Franc... -
Malni -Towards the Ocean, Towards the Shore
Directed by Sky Hopinka | 80 mins | 2020
The Chinookan people’s origin-of-death myth is at the core of Indigenous filmmaker Hopinka’s dreamy, ethereal debut feature, an experimental documentary following young parents Sweetwater Sahme and Jordan Mercier as they struggle with concerns surrounding... -
Pacifiction
Directed by Albert Serra | 165 mins | 2022
Serra’s mesmerizing portrait of a French bureaucrat’s (Benoît Magimel) visit to a French Polynesian island charts the uneasy relationships between his autocratic yet avuncular High Commissioner and the Indigenous locals under his faux-benevolent thumb. W... -
No Sleep Till
Directed by Alexandra Simpson | 93 mins | 2024
The threat of an impending hurricane has sent most of the residents of and visiting tourists to the coastal Florida town of Atlantic Beach scurrying for cover—but Simpson’s ravishing mood piece lingers behind with a handful of holdouts ignoring the ...
