SHORT TAKES

The opening of Adrift feels like hell. A woman wakes up bloodied and semi-submerged in the hull of a yacht that groans and creaks. She struggles against sloshing water and the sway of the waves, shouting a name but getting no response. All in a single take, she wades to a ladder, climbs it, then emerges on deck to desolation: the boat has been battered by a storm.

The woman is Tami, played by Shailene Woodley, and the film is based on the story of Tami Oldham, who sailed into the path of Hurricane Raymond in 1983. The man she’s calling for is Richard (Sam Claflin), and just as the desperation of her plight becomes clear, we bounce back to sunnier times on Tahiti, where the pair first meet and begin a charmed romance.

Adrift carries on in this way, alternating between dire circumstances and soft-lit wooing. These latter scenes are certainly the film’s weakest. Both Woodley and Claflin are impossibly lean, impossibly tanned, and utterly without regular responsibilities, which makes them a little unlikeable. That is, until Claflin flashes a goofy smile and all his brawniness disappears, and Woodley begins to take stock of isolation.

She carries the film almost singlehandedly, portraying feelings ranging from cold determination to despair in a similar way to Robert Redford in All Is Lost. Adrift doesn’t have the nerve to plumb the same emotional depths as that film, but it’s admirably gruelling.

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