Seagrass (2023)

Seagrass 🌊 

Seagrass follows Judith, a Canadian born - Japanese woman who takes her husband and two daughters to a self-development retreat, to find a way to cope with the passing of her mother, and hopefully receive some guidance for her struggling marriage. 

This story tests the inner workings of this mixed race family in the most subtle of ways, capturing how the micro fractures that develop overtime, can have ripple effects when you least expect it. 

As a child of divorce, I found myself resonating with the different dynamics between the children and their parents, each other as siblings, and the evolving social relationships that played out between the different kids on the island. 

You can see the damage it does having to observe a toxic environment, especially one that steams from a relationship that continues well passed it’s expiration date - and how those observations trickle into other parts of a child’s life. 

A main building block for any family is stability, but when the glue of the family begins to reevaluate their role as a mother, wife, and woman - it becomes tough to hold it all together. 

Judith’s dilemma is one of being cast in a role that she only now realizes has forced her to quietly endure the hurt and pain from being with an ungrateful husband, and now resenting the fact she never gave her Japanese heritage the time she wish had, especially knowing what her parents went through because of it. 

I was a fan of how the movie used dialogue to sway you one way, but the body language and energy would sway you another - it’s as if you’re riding the waves of the high tide that calmly roared throughout the story.  

Admittedly the buildup was a bit too slow for my liking, it lingered and drifted into a worthy ending but by the time I got there I felt checked out of the emotional elements of the film.

Even if it didn’t work for me as a whole, this is still a quality showing for Canadian filmmaking. 

Seagrass is a tragic portrait of a family being held together by a phantom thread, in a story that stresses that the sacrifices our ancestors made were so we live a better life - and not resent the lives we live. 

Enjoy!

6.3/10 🍿 🎥 

Runtime: 1hr55mins

Where: Toronto International Film Festival

Seagrass Review (2023) The Richmond Reviewer

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