Review: Dreamlike ‘Beach Rats’ explores a teen’s conflict in Coney Island
Is there anything lonelier than a secret?
Frankie has a big one — he’s attracted to men — and he can’t seem to reconcile it with his own life. Writer and director Eliza Hittman’s “Beach Rats ” follows this conflicted Coney Island teenager around one summer, both languid and fraught, as he quietly wrestles with identity and desires, often dulling out the noise with the help of his dying father’s prescription drugs.
Played by the captivating newcomer Harris Dickinson, “Beach Rats” introduces Frankie as he browses a live video chat site, Brooklyn Boys. With his flat-brimmed hat turned down to obscure his face, he looks dispassionately at the different windows, peering into the public-private lives of others. Some are performing for no one in particular, some are clothed and some are just waiting for that person who will agree to turn the computer screen off and meet up. Frankie stops on an older man who asks to see his face.