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‘The Wave’ Review: Sebastián Lelio’s Feminist Protest Musical is Vibrantly Staged but Dramatically Flat
Extreme theater-kid energy abounds in Sebastián Lelio's 'The Wave,' inspired by a 2018 series of feminist student takeovers in Chilean universities.
Composed and choreographed with energetic aplomb, shattering various fourth (and fifth and sixth) walls with purposeful abandon, Lelio’s first feature made in his homeland since 2017’s Oscar-winning “A Fantastic Woman” unspooled in Cannes’ non-competitive Premiere sidebar, and is sure to remain a prominent, singular object on the festival and arthouse scenes going forward. But if Julia hasn’t yet found her voice as a singer, the film repeatedly underlines, she has further still to go in finding it as a woman: Her tranformation from passive go-alonger, shy to speak truth to power, to crowd-mobilizing activist forms the spine of the script by Lelio and his female co-writers Manuela Infante, Josefina Fernández and Paloma Salas. DP Benjamín Echazarreta favors tracking shots that are propulsive but not invasive, giving dancers ample room for maneuver while the camera itself moves to their rhythm, while a limited, saturated color palette of suitably oceanic blues and corporeal reds contributes to the stark, alt-theatrical air of proceedings.
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