Between Waves
Dir Virginia Abramovich, Canada 2021
On digital platforms
This is a heartfelt sci-fi romance mystery that bites off more than it can chew. The central character is Jamie (Fiona Graham), a rather dislikeable photographer weighed down by more issues than you can shake a stick at: she has been traumatised since childhood by witnessing her mother’s suicide in the bath; her science-whiz boyfriend Isaac (Luke Robinson) has disappeared, feared drowned, and the detective in charge isn’t being terribly helpful; and Jamie is pregnant, wrestling with the decision of whether or not to have an abortion.
Already there is too much going on. Films have been made that deal with just one of these issues; high concept this is not.
We haven’t even got to the body of the plot yet – and here things become even more complicated. We learn that Isaac was working in the field of sub-atomic physics, exploring the possibility that atoms can exist in more than one place at the same time: in effect, in multiple parallel universes. Isaac had posited the notion not only that humans can do this too, but also that every time a person makes a decision, a parallel universe comes into existence: an endless series of ‘sliding doors’ moments. Jamie starts to imagine that she catches glimpses of Isaac around town, and as a consequence comes to believe there might be some truth in his research. In an effort to solve the mystery, she follows clues Isaac has left her and travels to the Azores for a final reckoning.
I think I’ve got that right – but the science is vague, as you might expect. You might also egregious example of this piling up of contrivances is Miguel, a bar owner whom Jamie meets in the Azores: he’s a gentle but melancholy soul who is himself grieving over the loss of his daughter who, you guessed it, drowned in the sea.
By the time the big finish arrived, I was hopelessly lost in the multiple parallel universes, didn’t know which version of which character I was watching or frankly what was going on – a state of affairs brought about by over-complication, obfuscation, and lack of clarity. Between Waves isn’t a bad film – even if the script is a mess, the acting is committed and Fiona Graham in particular lets it all hang out as the increasingly frantic Jamie – but it fails to deliver on any of its many themes.
Daniel King
★★ ★★★