Beach Rats

Unfolding over a single lazy summer in modern-day Brooklyn, this salty spin on the "coming out" drama offers a brutally unreserved look at masculinity and punch-drunk sexual awakening. It sees closeted teen Frankie (Harris Dickinson) whiling away his days with his surfer buddies before nightly scouring of gay chat rooms for older men with whom to hook up. As Frankie ricochets between his depressing home life, a confused girlfriend (Madeline Weinstein) and his fumbling twilight encounters, director Eliza Hittman (It Felt like Love) is content to let her film marinate in its own ambiguity, but she's also unflinching in her approach to its darker themes. Dickinson's often-wordless debut performance is a marvel in itself; his boyish uncertainty is quietly affecting, and when he explodes with sudden aggression, Hittman pushes her camera close to capture every tortured twitch. Playing like a brooding younger brother to 2016's Moonlight, Beach Rats may alienate some viewers with its willingness to dangle unanswered questions, but as a sun-drenched character study, it proves both robust and lingering.