Virginia Film Festival Diary, Day Two: ‘Breakwater’

When I was invited by the good people from the Virginia Film Festival to attend on a press pass, I was asked if I would be willing to introduce and moderate a post-screening Q&A on the film Breakwater with the film’s writer/director James Rowe and producer Matt Paul. I tentatively agreed, but with one condition: I would have to genuinely like the film. 

Well, tonight I introduced Breakwater to a near full house in a large screening room at the lovely Violet Crown theater in Charlottesville. So yes, it’s fair to say that I liked the film when I watched the screener at home. But tonight, I actually fell in love with it. Not only did it play better the second time around, there’s just something special about seeing a film on the big screen, to be totally immersed in the story.

One of the great challenges for those of us who write about current films is how to say just enough, but not too much. After all, we want the audience to discover the film too, even when we’re trying to delicately reveal why you should see it. 

That challenge can be doubly difficult when talking about a film like Breakwater. A tight, efficient thriller that has a plot twist that is both clever and coherent to go along with a surprising amount of warmth. 

Clocking in at 97 minutes, Breakwater wastes no time introducing a grizzled con named Ray (well played by Dermot Mulroney) asking a favor from fellow inmate Dovey (a terrific Darren Mann) who is about to get released. Ray wants Dovey to go see about a young woman who he believes he saw in a newspaper photograph. Dovey promises to do so in gratitude to Ray for taking him under his wing during his sentence. 

Ray’s request is complicated enough, as it requires Dovey to cross the Virginia state line to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, violating his parole. As his parole officer, Sonja Sohn will certainly give you the same no nonsense vibes she emanated as Keema from The Wire, while also displaying a tough but caring maternal side in the back half of the film. 

She warns Dovey about doing anything to risk his parole, but to Dovey, a promise is a promise, and he aims to keep it. In doing so, we learn that Ray’s ask is full of duplicity,  and his request is not as innocent as Dovey originally thought. 

The key to the film is Darren Mann’s sweet and gentle performance, which feels risky considering Dovey’s past. You have to buy that after spending three years in prison that Dovey could retain a level of innocence and kindness that might stretch credulity to the breaking point. 

But because Mann seems so naturally suited to Dovey’s disposition, you never question the purity of his motives. It’s a neat trick that Mann pulls off, one that might have flummoxed many a better known actor. I wasn’t all that familiar with Mann’s work before Breakwater, but if enough people see the film, I suspect he will get a real career boost from his charming and disarming performance here. 

His gentle romance with Marina, the young woman that Ray asks him to find, could have felt cliched, but the tenderness in Mann and Alyssa Goss’s performances carry the moment and add another layer of depth to a film that is full of subtle surprises. That’s also a credit to Rowe’s highly intelligent screenplay and his sensitive direction. Twenty-four years have passed since Rowe made his first film, 1999’s Blue Ridge Fall. Breakwater is Rowe’s second film as a director. A gap that I hope does not repeat itself, considering what a strong and deeply intelligent effort Breakwater is.

Despite Breakwater’s brevity, it’s still a film that sneaks up on you. It’s more complex than it originally appears and has an emotional resonance that’s well earned. There’s also a terrific prison escape scene that made me grin from ear to ear, and even reminded me of a similar sequence from The Silence of the Lambs. Breakwater makes great use of its North Carolina backdrop, with beautiful coastal shots that stand in defiance of  the film’s low budget. 

And when the movie peaks with a spectacularly shot underwater scene, the sequence isn’t just filmed with brio, but also with grace and elegance. There’s a sadness in the moment as the scene concludes with an embrace, we feel a level of grief that both men understand because even though they end up in opposition to one another, their affection for each other is real.

There’s a great line in the film spoken by the fine character actor JD Evermore who plays Dovey’s father, Luther. “What’s right changes over time,” he says. When you let those words sink in, you can probably think of many moments in your own life when you thought something was right, and later you took a different view. 

But let me ever so gently defy that statement at least when it comes to speaking of Breakwater. This is a terrific film, and one of the reasons people like myself love going to festivals—to discover. 

It is my fervent hope that Breakwater, which has secured distribution, will get discovered like it was tonight by a very appreciative crowd of filmgoers. I know that I’m right about this film, and over time, I’m quite sure I will only be proven more right.