Sundance Review: Cynthia Erivo & Alia Shawkat in Anthony Chen’s “Drift”

Anyone who has traveled to seaside resorts around the world will recognize them, the obvious foreigners who spend their days recruiting tourists with various trinkets to buy and are usually ignored or shooed away by Westerners. However, there are very few films that focus on such characters drive does that and more as it explores a young woman whose current desolate position in the world hides the very different kind of life she was once accustomed to.

Tragedy and grief are treated in a particularly sharp and insightful manner drive. Works based on a 2013 novel by Alexander Maksik, the full title of which is A marker to measure drift, the author and his co-writer Susanne Farrell tackled a challenging story that many moviegoers would easily avoid, a personal tragedy of staggering proportions. But it is not only the Singaporean director Anthony Chen who has set himself a difficult task with this ambitious adaptation, he has also remarkably succeeded in letting the viewer see the world with completely different eyes.

The film, which had its world premiere in the Sundance Film Festival Premieres section, operates in observation mode for the first half hour as we observe the curious movements of a young woman, believed to be a refugee from Africa, as she makes her way through the crowd step. of tourists along a beautiful seaside town in Greece. Jacqueline (Cynthia Erivo) gives a massage here, earns a fee there and it’s easy to get the feeling that if she could make herself invisible, she would be happy to do so.

But there is something about this woman that sets her apart from the other refugees working on the beach, the first sign of which is her thick British accent, although she speaks as few words as possible. You sense that despite her best efforts to keep a low profile, she is afraid of being exposed or discovered in some way.

This sense of intrigue lasts only long enough when another young woman, Callie (the ever-welcome Alia Shawkat), a legitimate and gregarious tour guide who takes groups through the beautiful and rugged coastal region, connects with her, or at least tries to to Jacqueline is as reserved and reclusive as can be.

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First secretly, then violently, Jacqueline’s deep, tragic secret is revealed. Meanwhile, the two women begin a tentative but ultimately meaningful relationship that eventually uncovers the reason for Jacqueline’s self-imposed exile from life. Her story unfolds in fits and starts until some intense flashbacks tell the full story. Shawkat’s natural outspokenness and joy in speaking contrasts perfectly with the unenlightened darkness of Jacqueline’s life.

Once the dreaded secret is out, one begins to appreciate the quiet and understated way Chen and the writers have structured their telling of this tragic story. Circumstances and their aftermath may have prompted grittier and more obvious filmmakers to increase the melodramatic nature of the payoff, but the proportion and slightly understated approach feels spot on given the mystery embedded in the more subtle approach.

This admirable storytelling will appeal to once art house audiences. To what extent it still exists is debatable, but discerning viewers, wherever they may be, will surely appreciate the skill with which this slow-burning drama has been prepared.