SUGAR BEACH – Review by Lois Alter Mark
The kids are not alright in Sugar Beach, which continues to haunt me because this beautiful and raw film was inspired by true events.
A festival favorite, Sugar Beach deals with grief and trauma and the often-destructive ways teens attempt to manage them. The film focuses on Rosalyn (Zoe Manzotti), a straight A high school senior still trying to come to terms with the drowning accident that killed her twin brother, Gabriel.
Alcohol becomes her method of self-soothing until her friends, Emma (Emma Blomquist) and Isaac (Ryley Schroeder) invite her to be their girlfriend. The three, all of whom are smart and popular school athletes grappling with their own demons, provide a welcoming, safe haven for each other in a confusing and cruel world.
Although, of course, they’re friends with benefits, the throuple is more about unconditional love and acceptance than sex. To the filmmakers’ credit, even the sex scenes are filmed so lovingly and respectfully, they come across as a natural way for the three to express their genuine affection for each other. Audiences won’t look at them as some lewd threesome.
Unfortunately, everyone else in their lives does. When a sex video of the three of them mysteriously surfaces, they are shunned by almost everyone in their affluent California community, including the school principal, who immediately takes Rosalyn and Isaac out of the running for valedictorian and gives the honor to someone else. Other than Emma’s mom, who tries to be supportive, every other adult in their lives fails them, from Emma and Isaac’s domineering fathers to Rosalyn’s emotionally absent single mother, who has become an addict herself while trying to cope with the death of her son.
Manzotti wrote the screenplay for Sugar Beach and her performance is personal and visceral. The cinematography subtly adds to the film’s impact, making it empathetic and moving rather than syrupy or sentimental.
Director Noely Mendoza has created a modern day coming of age story that feels so real, it’s impossible not to root for these teens. She has said this is the first film in the Sugar Beach trilogy and I’m so glad because I’m now totally invested in what happens to them.
