Both sides of the story
With Waves, director Trey Edward Shults makes an autobiographical drama — with a dramatic twist
HEARTBREAK COMES IN two distinct forms in Trey Edward Shults’ sprawling, sensitive Florida-set family drama Waves. The film, a surprise hit at Toronto film festival, focuses on a suburban African-american family, and is split between the perspectives of the two children, Tyler (Kelvin Harrison Jr) and his sister Emily (Taylor Russell). Halfway through, the film makes the bold choice to completely upend its structure, switching from Tyler’s viewpoint to Emily’s when tragedy hits. His love story with his girlfriend Alexis (Alexa Demie) gives way to hers with her boyfriend Luke (Lucas Hedges).
“We knew the structure would be polarising,” says Shults (whose last film was the apocalyptic thriller It Comes At Night) “but we just had to go for it”. The filmmaker, who describes it as his most autobiographical film, says the genesis for the film initially came from music. “I saw it like a contemporary Dazed And Confused,” Shults explains, “a soundtrack movie for kids in high school” — and it certainly boasts an eclectic soundtrack, featuring Frank Ocean, Animal Collective, Kanye West and Radiohead.
Initially, the script first only focused on the character of Tyler. “And then probably halfway through,” Shults recalls, “there was an epiphany”. Deciding to tell the story from two viewpoints, was how the writer-director ‘found’ the movie. “When it became Tyler and Emily — that’s when it we felt the real DNA of what the movie was.”
He’d found the structure. But Shults realised he needed some distance from telling such a personal story before completing it. “It’s been brewing for a decade or more,” he says. “Both couples [in the film] are my girlfriend and I at different phases. But because there’s so much in it — the yin and the yang, the two halves forming that whole — I couldn’t write when I was in it,” he says. “I had to live through life, and gain perspective from the other side.”
Changing your lead character halfway through a film is an approach that could, Shults acknowledges, be polarising, and some reactions out of Toronto reflect that. But the messiness is a neat reflection of life’s messiness. “I find myself loving imperfect movies,” Shults says, “because it becomes an intangible thing I connect with. That feels more like life to me.” WAVES IS IN CINEMAS FROM 17 JANUARY 2020