“Drowning Dry” Plays with Our Ability to Remember
Grief changes our memories. In John Green’s lesser known novel, An Abundance of Katherines, he wrote, “You don't remember what happened. What you remember becomes what happened.” As smart and capable as our brains are, they’re fallible when it comes to trauma. They fill in blanks, create gaps, and change reality in order to protect us. Writer/director Laurynas Bareiša examines the fluidity of memories in a time of great grief in his film Drowning Dry. The film lulls the viewer into a sensation of a listless summer vacation before inverting itself in response to a moment of immense change.
Sisters Ernesta (Gelminė Glemžaitė) and Justė (Agnė Kaktaitė), along with their husbands Lukas (Paulius Markevičius) and Tomas (Giedrius Kiela), have brought their kids (Olivija Eva Viliūnė & Herkus Sarapas) to their lakeside family house. It’s supposed to be a relaxing vacation, the sort of lazy escape from reality they haven’t been able to do for a long time. The kids love swimming and the freedom of the countryside while the parents enjoy cigars and wine. Their peaceful trip is interrupted by a traumatic incident that irrevocably ruptures the family.
courtesy of Drowning Dry
The film’s title comes from an unofficial medical term used to describe when someone has difficulty breathing after inhaling water. What makes it unique is that the person’s lungs are not filled entirely with water. It isn’t always fatal, but it does require medical attention. In the case of the film, “drowning dry” can refer to the unexpected, subtle build toward a moment where the world is fundamentally changed. Drowning Dry is told in a non-linear fashion, returning to past scenes and presenting them in a new light. Everything is slow and steady until it’s not. That’s life, isn’t it? We’re moving along on our path until things splinter and we’re forced to put it all back together.
But what if we can’t put it all back the way it was? Whether that be because of loss or trauma, Drowning Dry is a film that takes place in the aftermath. Both in the literal sense and in the more figurative sense of the flashbacks the audience sees presented as from an ever-shifting perspective. Each of the characters in the film has their own memory of what happened, so whose is the one that most closely matches reality? Dry Drowning never tells the audience. In fact, there’s very little resolution at the end of the film. There’s a sense of fragmentation about this period in the characters’ lives, and the film leans into that by making these time jumps sometimes difficult to understand. We’re as lost and driftless as the characters reeling from their sadness. Dry Drowning is scared by what it remembers, but even more afraid of what it forgot.
courtesy of Drowning Dry
This uncertain ground can leave the audience feeling a bit cold or detached from the characters. They represent the sort of archetypes that are present in many indie European dramas. Lukas and Tomas are opposite ends of the masculinity spectrum, but both have toxicity in them. Lukas is a UFC-type fighter who is strong, but struggles to make money. Tomas is softer, but is financially stable. They look at each other and think the other is less of a man than they are, but Dry Drowning doesn’t allow these dueling types to hash it out. One small scene sees Tomas saying he could fight Lukas because he’s been taking lessons, but this moment is only the smallest glimpse of the tension that exists between them. The same goes for the sisters. They are fundamentally different, but have decades of shared history. They’re cut from the same cloth, but you can’t tell by looking at them. Because of Dry Drowning’s more reserved approach, the audience does miss some of the intensity and intimacy that comes from a more open perspective.
What is clear at the end of the day is that Ernesta and Justė have chosen each other. Sisters can stray from one another, find their paths take them to different places, but Ernesta and Justė have chosen to fight to stay in each other’s lives. Drowning Dry is purposefully frustrating in its depiction of events. One could make the case of a fork in the road, of two alternate realities, but the audience isn’t sure which one is the real one. Reality, though, as Drowning Dry argues, isn’t what’s most important. What matters is our memory and our perception of our life events.
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