In Rebekah Fortune's second feature, a sunny au pair attempts to heal a closed-off widower and his eight-year-old son — a familiar premise lifted by tender performances from Maria Bakalova, Rory Kinnear and winning newcomer Ezra Carlisle.
By Guy Lodge
Plus IconGuy Lodge
Film Critic
@guylodge See All
Bankside A 25-foot fibreglass model of a shark — or its rear half, at least — adorning the roof of an otherwise ordinary terraced house in suburban Oxford, England, the Headington Shark is the kind of local curiosity that makes any casual passersby think, “There must be a story there.” And there is: It’s a work of protest art devised in 1986 by sculptor John Buckley and homeowner Bill Heine as a statement against nuclear warfare and military airstrikes. Forty years later, however, “Learning to Breathe Under Water” imagines quite a different one, taking the eccentric artwork as the starting point for a fictional tale of grief, healing and household repair, and as the visual cue for its own eccentric stylistic flourishes. If the real-life shark sculpture was a controversial point of community debate, however, Rebekah Fortune‘s highly likable, heart-on-sleeve tearjerker won’t be nearly as divisive.
Related Stories
