EIFF: Hang Ten in … Ireland?!
Every film festival always has a documentary or two, and Between Land and Sea focuses on the lives of a band of like- minded sportsmen in the international surfing hotspot of … Ireland.
No, that wasn’t a typo. The town of Lahinch, on the west coast of Ireland near the cliffs of Moher, lays claim to some pretty sweet waves, and has drawn quite the cross section of folks who’ve spent plenty of time riding them. Featured are Ollie, an upbeat but not terribly worldwise greenhorn bent on turning Lahinch into a world centre for surfing; his buddy, Dexter, who, rather precariously, attempts to make a living running a surfing school on the local beach; Fergal, a former pro surfer who’s returned home to become a farmer; Tom, a mining engineer from the UK who, despite his dedication to the sport, finds his day to day responsibilities taking him further and further away from it; and, in the “one of these things is not like the other” category, local sexagenarian swimming enthusiast Patrick Conway, who was probably added to the roster after the producers realized they were about to make a movie about Ireland without anyone named “Patrick” in it.
As a surf film it is gently iconoclastic, bringing each life story together is a thematic reflection that counters prevailing media attitudes about sport in general. The film seems to conclude that surfing, while a fun activity, is pretty small potatoes when viewing a life in its totality. It’s something some people find rewarding for a season, before needing to move on to other things, like establishing a career or a family.
To its credit, the film is unflinchingly real in its exploration of these characters as actual human beings with real life problems outside of the water. Just like life, some of them are successful, like Tom and Ollie, and some aren’t, like Fergal, who seems to have about as much success farming as his countrymen did in the potato famine. Or Dexter, who experiences firsthand the precarious nature of trying to make a living teaching a warm weather sport in a country with horrible and unpredictable weather. Given what’s shown, he’d probably have better luck as a sailing instructor on Lake Wabamun.
From a narrative standpoint, the film would have been a lot more effective with a tighter edit – like, dropping a couple of the characters to whittle the length down to around 50 minutes, as redundancy in the material really starts to wear by that point. It’s hard to count how many times Ollie went off on identical tangents of how he wanted to turn Lahinch into a world center for surfing.
Still, given the plethora of gorgeous cinematography they shot in this desolately beautiful place, you can see why they left it all in.
Between Land and Sea screens Saturday, Sept. 29 at 11 am as part of the Edmonton International Film Festival.
