Another gay Sundance 2017 hit: Eliza Hittman’s BEACH RATS with Harris Dickinson

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

http://www.vulture.com/2017/07/see-the-exclusive-trailer-and-poster-for-beach-rats.html

See the Exclusive Trailer and Poster for
Eliza Hittman’s Sex-Soaked Beach Rats
By Kyle Buchanan
July 20, 2017 2:57 pm

Back in January, fresh off watching Luca Guadagnino’s masterpiece Call Me by Your Name  at the Sundance Film Festival, I put a question to Film Twitter: Are there any American directors who imbue their films with as much sensuality as European masters like Guadagnino, Andrea Arnold, and Pedro Almodóvar? The very next day, I saw Eliza Hittman’s terrific Beach Rats,  and I knew we had a contender; so did the festival jury, which awarded Hittman a directing prize. Lensed by Hélène Louvart, Beach Rats  follows young Brooklyn bro Frankie (breakout Harris Dickinson) as he navigates the intricacies of performative masculinity: Sitting on the boardwalk with his friends, he plays along with their catcalls and girl talk, but when Frankie is alone in his family’s basement, snapping shirtless selfies in the darkness to entice other men online, he’s commodifying a sexuality that he hasn’t even figured out yet. Take a look at this exclusive trailer and poster for Beach Rats,  out August 25.

[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=df0TQJBkPP4[/youtube]
BEACH RATS [Theatrical Trailer]
In Select Theaters Starting August 25th

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

Harris Dickinson as Frankie isn’t even sure what he wants or who he is and rather than send him on an overly familiar soul search, Eliza Hittman presents a journey devoid of cliche or mawkish sentiment. We learn as Frankie learns and at times, his character might seem frustratingly vacant, but it’s in the small details that we discover who he really is. A quick glance of jealousy directed at his younger sister holding hands with a boy, the doomed hope that a steady stream of drugs will alter his sexuality, a soft kindness towards his struggling mother and a firm interest in only having receptive sex with older men.






https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/jan/23/beach-rats-review-film-gay-coming-of-age-brooklyn




Sundance 2017
First look review
Beach Rats
Sundance 2017 Review
Brooklyn bro faces his sexuality in quietly powerful drama
Broody tale of a young man struggling to come to terms with his own desires
avoids cliche and provides a poignant and authentic character study

by Benjamin Lee
@benfraserlee
Monday 23 January 2017 22.30 EST

‘A captivating character study’ ... Harris Dickinson in Eliza Hittman's Beach Rats    Photograph: Cinereach




The fascinating complexities of the coming out experience have been largely underrepresented on the big screen, strange given the strong dramatic potential for both eroticism and torturous inner struggle. But recently, Barry Jenkins’ deservedly lauded heartbreaker Moonlight  gave much-needed insight and tenderness to this journey while also exploring the damaging effects that performed hyper-masculinity can have.

His award-winning drama makes for a comfortable, if refreshingly different, bedfellow with the sophomore feature from writer/director Eliza Hittman. Her quietly powerful story focuses on Frankie (Harris Dickinson), an aloof Brooklyn-dwelling bro who spends his summer days getting high with buddies. One night he meets local girl Simone and starts a tentative relationship with her but something is holding him back. The passion that’s missing from his sexual encounters with Simone is reserved for something else: his late-night outdoor hookups with older men.

Hittman was inspired to make Beach Rats  after seeing a shirtless selfie online, captivated by the fine line between heteronormative bravado and homoeroticism. It’s an area she explores with care in the film, the physical intimacy between Frankie and his straight friends subtly in conflict with an intense need to show off their manliness, whether it be swaggering down the Coney Island beachfront or taking it in turns to see who has the strongest punch at the fair.

Frankie is desperately trying to hide who he is while also making the progression into manhood. His body is developed but his boyish face and haircut reveal his tender youth. He’s also faced with the responsibility of being the man of the house as his father faces terminal illness. Throughout the film, thanks in large part to Dickinson’s nuanced performance, we can feel the change along with him. Frankie isn’t even sure what he wants or who he is and rather than send him on an overly familiar soul search, Hittman presents a journey devoid of cliche or mawkish sentiment. We learn as Frankie learns and at times, his character might seem frustratingly vacant, but it’s in the small details that we discover who he really is. A quick glance of jealousy directed at his younger sister holding hands with a boy, the doomed hope that a steady stream of drugs will alter his sexuality, a soft kindness towards his struggling mother and a firm interest in only having receptive sex with older men.

Like her debut feature It Felt Like Love,  Hittman approaches teenage sexuality in an unvarnished manner, often explicitly but without exploitation and with remarkable insight (the hypocrisy of female vs male bisexuality is a particularly underexplored issue). She refrains from making Frankie’s hookups seem as grimy and sordid as another film-maker might have done and the excitement they provide is a refreshing counterpoint to the awkward sadness of the failed sexual encounters he shares with his attractive girlfriend.

Beach Rats  is a captivating character study and one that feels vital. The idea that coming out in western culture has been made universally accepted with societal changes signaling wider beliefs is a myth, and journalling what is a common difficulty for many young men feels important. Hittman is keen to avoid a standard coming out story, though, and while the final act does lead to more obvious dramatic conflict, she ends on a stunning note of dreamy romance and possibility.

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfJ9m7Rr5ew[/youtube]
BEACH RATS   [Clip]
"That's Gay."
In Select Theaters Starting August 25th

[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdZmwep-4aI[/youtube]
BEACH RATS    [Official Teaser]
Fall 2017://NEON

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

In a year filled with astonishing breakout big-screen performances, Harris Dickinson stands out, and you will have a hard time getting his work here out of your head. At a recent advanced screening of the film at Outfest Film Festival in Los Angeles, soft-spoken and charming Eliza Hittman participated in a Q&A after the film. A piercing collective gasp echoed throughout the room when she revealed that Dickinson is, in fact, English. He is so convincing as a hood rat from Brooklyn that one would assume Hittman had simply plucked him off the street right before cameras rolled. His New York accent is masterful, and the way he carries himself is uncanny. This is also a performance of extraordinary magnetism and emotional weight.






https://parade.com/589403/samuelmurrian/review-harris-dickinson-is-a-powerhouse-in-eliza-hittmans-dreamy-knockout-beach-rats/




Sundance 2017 Review
Sundance 2017
Harris Dickinson Is a Powerhouse
in Eliza Hittman's Dreamy Knockout
Beach Rats
by SAMUEL R. MURRIAN  
@SamuelR_Murrian
AUGUST 7, 2017 – 1:21 PM

Harris Dickinson gives a breakout performance in Eliza Hittman's Sundance hit Beach Rats    Photograph: NEON




One of the greatest draws of film festivals is being among the first to discover incredible new talent. Writer/director Eliza Hittman's drama Beach Rats  has been navigating through various festivals since its much-buzzed-about premiere at Sundance 2017 in January. Following the well-received It Felt Like Love  (2013), Beach Rats  is Hittman’s second feature. She won Sundance’s Best Director prize in the U.S. Dramatic Competition section this year, and star Harris Dickinson has been turning heads and earning raves for his raw, uninhibited and wrenching screen debut.

In Beach Rats,  Dickinson plays 19-year-old Frankie, an aimless kid in Brooklyn who spends most of his days hanging out, pumping iron and prowling the boardwalk with his beach rat buddies. He lives at home with his mother (Kate Hodge) and his father who is in hospice care and dying of cancer. Frankie is gay, and he struggles between confusion and outright denial. Things are further complicated when he catches the eye of a forward young woman named Simone (Madeline Weinstein). Frankie compartmentalizes his life, as many confused and scared young people do. He acts like a bro around his buddies, he goes on some awkward dates with Simone, and he tries to be there for his drained and exhausted family as well. He doesn’t go to school, nor does he have a job. By night, Frankie seeks online hookups which range from exciting to embarrassing to dangerous. Frankie is also a drug addict, and this is mostly underplayed until the third act. He smokes all the weed he can find, and he pilfers painkillers from his father’s medicine cabinet. It’s only a matter of time before everything comes crashing down around him.




Harris Dickinson and Madeline Weinstein in Eliza Hittman's Beach Rats    Photograph: NEON



Hittman’s directing prize was well-deserved; her work is humane, insightful and unique. The film is filled with close-ups, and she studies faces as if they were mountain ranges (a great reason to see this in a theater). The grainy and luminous 16mm photography by Hélène Louvart is drenched in neon and the contrast is very high. Several nighttime sequences are shot with harsh lighting, and it gives the impression that we’re invading these characters’ [very] personal space. Scenes of physical intimacy play out to uncomfortable length, and within them Hittman develops character in ways that only such scenes can provide. With only two features under her belt, Hittman has truly established herself as a director with her own style and approach to storytelling. Her writing is so good that you don’t really notice it; the dialogue feels utterly spontaneous and authentic.

Beach Rats  is a marvel of film casting. Frankie’s friends have incredible faces and presence. Hodge does harrowing work as a mother who is watching her son implode and self-destruct with a combination of bewilderment, anger and love. Weinstein is sharp and quite sympathetic. Frankie’s struggles put Simone through the ringer, yet Simone never comes off as a nag or anything but a good girl with a crush who is being lied to.

In a year filled with astonishing breakout big-screen performances, Dickinson stands out, and you will have a hard time getting his work here out of your head. At a recent advanced screening of the film at Outfest Film Festival in Los Angeles, soft-spoken and charming Hittman participated in a Q&A after the film. A piercing collective gasp echoed throughout the room when she revealed that Dickinson is, in fact, English. He is so convincing as a hood rat from Brooklyn that one would assume Hittman had simply plucked him off the street right before cameras rolled. His New York accent is masterful, and the way he carries himself is uncanny. This is also a performance of extraordinary magnetism and emotional weight.

There’s a visual motif that Hittman revisits throughout the film of Frankie taking shirtless mirror selfies on his phone, looking at himself but not really seeing himself, playing with his appearance to avoid a true reflection of himself. This image is haunting. Frankie is painfully in denial, repeatedly betraying himself and hurting the people around him. Some of his scenes with Simone are excruciating to watch. And in the final act, his worlds collide when he naively suggests that he and his broke, jobless buddies acquire some weed by meeting up with a gay guy he’s met online. This judiciously edited sequence starts out distressing, and by the end it turns horrifying. Even though I found Beach Rats  disturbing, I loved it. It is vital and full of truth. This would make a great double bill with last year’s Best Picture Oscar-winner Moonlight,  with which it shares similar thematic material and even a comparable visual aesthetic. Whereas Moonlight  ended on a hopeful note, the conclusion [or lack thereof] of Beach Rats  is effectively ambiguous and open. The film is hard to shake and hypnotizing to watch, like a neon dream you never want to leave. It is also, in many ways a nightmare. Hittman is a brave and singular voice, and I can’t wait to see what she does next.


Neon will release Beach Rats theatrically on August 25.

Dickinson will star as  John Paul Getty III in FX’s upcoming crime drama Trust  alongside Donald Sutherland, Hilary Swank and Brendan Fraser. Trust  is slated for an early 2018 premiere.

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

This is achingly delicate psychological territory, heavily dependent on just the right actor to make flesh its scripted subtleties — and Eliza Hittman has found him in Harris Dickinson, whose perfectly lazy outer NYC drawl and hunched dudebro swagger banish all thoughts of his London drama-school pedigree. His Frankie is at once maddeningly impenetrable and desperately vulnerable, snarling some responses and mumbling others as if in apology for his very existence; it’s a performance that nails typical teenage switchbacks and insecurities with an active, unshakable terror over who he might turn out to be.






http://variety.com/2017/film/reviews/beach-rats-review-1201963316/



SUNDANCE 2017
Sundance Film Review:
Beach Rats

British newcomer Harris Dickinson makes a stunning impression in Eliza Hittman's
beautifully rendered study of repressed sexuality in un-hip Brooklyn.


by Guy Lodge
    @guylodge
JANUARY 23, 2017 | 07:30PM PT





Frankie, the oh-so-beautiful, oh-so-confused teenage protagonist of Beach Rats,  isn’t much for answering questions. “I don’t know what I like,” he says curtly, if not dishonestly, to the various older men, sought in gay chat rooms, who want to know if they turn him on. And when a hesitantly acquired girlfriend asks him, twice, if he finds her pretty, he pointedly refuses to answer, bouncing the question back at her in a tone that’s both taunting and searching. Writer-director Eliza Hittman has a sensitive ear for the way adolescents reveal themselves through evasion: It’s a tension crucial to this anxious, tactile, profoundly sad study of a young man’s journey of sexual self-discovery and self-betrayal on the luridly faded boardwalks of Brooklyn.

Fully delivering on the promise of her rough-diamond debut It Felt Like Love,  Hittman’s sophomore feature is unlikely to match the arthouse exposure of Moonlight,  which it would nonetheless handsomely complement on a double bill dedicated to inchoate gay identity in the social margins. As with Moonlight,  viewers might detect a certain European composure to its depiction of very American terrain — there are formal and tonal echoes here of auteurs ranging from Claire Denis to early Lynne Ramsay — though Beach Rats  is more serrated than Barry Jenkins’ film in its visual style and editing rhythms. Frenchwoman Hélène Louvart, most celebrated for her documentary work with Wim Wenders (Pina ) and Agnes Varda (The Beaches of Agnes ), is an inspired choice of d.p. here, shooting predominantly in gorgeously grainy, low-lit 16mm. It’s not merely a fashionably distressed aesthetic choice, but one that enhances the film’s vividly dilapidated sense of place: As in her debut, Hittman shoots in and around the neglected streets, amusement arcades and beaches of far Brooklyn and Staten Island, an urban playground now left out of time.

Yet for 19-year-old Frankie (Harris Dickinson, a head-turning Brit making his feature debut), such crumbling pleasure palaces provide what little pleasure he’s known. “Why would we go all the way to the city when there’s plenty of good places here?” he incredulously asks the skeptical Simone (Madeline Weinstein) at the outset of their hesitant first date. Thus is the tiny perimeter of his world described: Jobless, carless, and out of school, Frankie’s whiling away the summer lifting weights, smoking weed, and aimlessly hanging out with fellow jocks whom he repeatedly, only half-jokingly insists aren’t his friends. It’s not the most stimulating social life, but it beats home, where his cancer-ridden dad is living out his last days in palliative care; his loving but emotionally depleted mother (an excellent Kate Hodge) barely has the energy to raise an eyebrow at the drugs and girls he brings home with scant concealment.

It’s a life that offers precious little in the way of the unknown, save for one new avenue of exploration: anonymous cruising on online gay chat rooms, where older men are only too eager to broaden the sculpted, rose-skinned young blond’s horizons. Games of show-me-yours from the safe distance of a computer screen soon progress to discreet meets on the not-so-romantic sands of Brooklyn, as Frankie struggles to work out what exactly this fixation says about him — the answer never seeming so simple from within the closet as it does to those outside.

While teenage coming-out stories are thankfully no rarity in today’s independent cinema, it’s still unusual for one to pin a character’s arc so explicitly to direct sexual exploration as opposed to any suggestion of romantic interest — perhaps the only course available to a young man whose regular social life appears bereft even of incidental LGBT contact. Does Frankie court older men to forestall greater attraction on his part? Does he subscribe to outdated chat-room models, as opposed to the youth-oriented immediacy of apps like Grindr, out of denial or simple ignorance? Would downloading gay porn be a step too far in admitting his desires to himself? Beach Rats  leaves such questions carefully open as it thoughtfully negotiates the maelstrom of clashing conditions and uncertainties in its protagonist’s psyche — culminating, in one breathtaking, tightly sewn sequence, in a misguided attempt to rationalize his bi-curiosity to his pals, with horrifying consequences.

This is achingly delicate psychological territory, heavily dependent on just the right actor to make flesh its scripted subtleties — and Hittman has found him in Dickinson, whose perfectly lazy outer NYC drawl and hunched dudebro swagger banish all thoughts of his London drama-school pedigree. His Frankie is at once maddeningly impenetrable and desperately vulnerable, snarling some responses and mumbling others as if in apology for his very existence; it’s a performance that nails typical teenage switchbacks and insecurities with an active, unshakable terror over who he might turn out to be. This is an ideally cast movie down the line — Weinstein, too, deserves applause for her deft, well-salted turn as Frankie’s more-perceptive-than-she-seems girlfriend. But it’s Dickinson whose face you take away from the film, his features arranged into a extraordinary, elusive puzzle, whether garishly tinted with shoreside fireworks or shaded by a hoodie in his online exploits. Hittman and Louvart don’t gaze upon it too lavishly, however, forever shooting that face at angles and in shadows that keep something hidden. “Do you think I’m pretty?” he asks. Even in mockery, it’s the question of a man who can’t, or won’t, see himself.



Sundance Film Review: 'Beach Rats'

Reviewed at UTA screening room, Los Angeles, Jan. 18, 2017. (In Sundance Film Festival — U.S. Dramatic Competition.) Running time: 97 MIN.

Production
A Cinereach production. (International sales: Mongrel, Toronto.) Producers: Brad Becker-Parton, Drew Houpt, Paul Mezey, Andrew Goldman. Executive producers: Philipp Engelhorn, Michael Raisler. Co-producer, Shrihari Sethe.

Crew
Director/writer: Eliza Hittman. Camera (color, 16mm): Hélène Louvart. Editors: Scott Cummings, Joe Murphy.

With
Harris Dickinson, Madeline Weinstein, Kate Hodge, Nicole Flyus, Anton Selyaninov, Frank Hakaj, David Ivanov, Harrison Sheehan, Erik Potempa.

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

London Critics’ Circle Film Awards – Nominations/Awards




YOUNG BRITISH/IRISH PERFORMER OF THE YEAR
Harris Dickinson – Beach Rats – Winner

[youtube=960,540]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ncxAN5Ngr8[/youtube]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ncxAN5Ngr8

Harris Dickinson - Beach Rats - Critics Circle Awards 2018 Red Carpet Interview

Scott Davis from HeyUGuys interviews Harris Dickinson for Beach Rats on the red carpet of
The 2018 Critics Circle Awards held at the MayFair Hotel in London on the 28th of January 2018.

HeyUGuys
Published on Jan 28, 2018

London Critics’ Circle Film Awards – Nominations/Awards




ACTOR OF THE YEAR
Timothée Chalamet – Call Me By Your Name – Winner








The winners were announced on January 28 at London’s May Fair Hotel (Stratton Street, Mayfair, London, W1J 8LT).
Alice Lowe and Steve Oram hosted the ceremony, at which time
Kate Winslet received the critics’ highest honor, The Dilys Powell Award for Excellence in Film.



FILM OF THE YEAR
Call Me By Your Name – Nominated
God’s Own Country – Nominated


BRITISH/IRISH FILM OF THE YEAR: The Attenborough Award
Dunkirk – Winner
God’s Own Country – Nominated


DIRECTOR OF THE YEAR
Luca Guadagnino – Call Me By Your Name – Nominated


SCREENWRITER OF THE YEAR
James Ivory – Call Me By Your Name – Nominated


ACTOR OF THE YEAR
Timothée Chalamet – Call Me By Your Name – Winner


SUPPORTING ACTOR OF THE YEAR
Hugh Grant – Paddington 2 – Winner
Michael Stuhlbarg – Call Me By Your Name – Nominated


BRITISH/IRISH ACTOR OF THE YEAR
Josh O’Connor – God’s Own Country – Nominated


YOUNG BRITISH/IRISH PERFORMER OF THE YEAR
Harris Dickinson – Beach Rats – Winner


BREAKTHROUGH BRITISH/IRISH FILMMAKER: The Philip French Award
Francis Lee – God’s Own Country – Winner


TECHNICAL ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
Blade Runner 2049 – Dennis Gassner, production design – Winner
God’s Own Country – Joshua James Richards, cinematography – Nominated





http://deadline.com/2017/12/london-critics-circle-nominations-2017-three-billboards-phantom-thread-lady-macbeth-1202229652/
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/jan/29/three-billboards--three-london-critics-circle-awards-oscars-martin-mcdonagh-frances-mcdormand
https://www.list.co.uk/article/98787-billboards-and-timothee-chalamet-win-big-at-london-film-critics-circle-awards/