At the Sea (2026) Movie Review: Amy Adams Delivers Raw Performance in a Drama That Drowns in Its Own Metaphors

Kornél Mundruczó's At the Sea, which premiered at the 76th Berlin International Film Festival on February 16, 2026, marks the Hungarian director's return to English-language filmmaking following his Oscar-nominated 2020 feature Pieces of a Woman. Produced by Hammerstone Studios, 3:33 Creative Productions, and AR Content, this 112-minute drama reunites Mundruczó with screenwriter and partner Kata Wéber for a story inspired by her personal experiences. The film centers on Laura Baum, a recovering alcoholic and renowned dance choreographer played by six-time Oscar nominee Amy Adams, who returns to her family's Cape Cod beach home after a six-month rehabilitation stint following a drunk driving incident with her young son Felix in the car. The ensemble cast features Murray Bartlett as her artist husband Martin, Chloe East as teenage daughter Josie, Redding L. Munsell as young son Felix, with supporting performances from Brett Goldstein, Dan Levy, Jenny Slate, and Rainn Wilson.

The film matters as a potential showcase for Adams's dramatic range, positioning her for another Oscar campaign after years without a win despite six previous nominations. It also represents Mundruczó's attempt to examine addiction, family dysfunction, and artistic legacy through an intimate character study. However, At the Sea arrives seeking U.S. distribution following a polarizing Berlin reception, with the film dividing audiences between those who praise Adams's committed performance and those who find the screenplay too self-conscious and emotionally hollow to sustain its dramatic ambitions over nearly two hours.

Story and Screenplay: Shallow Waters Disguised as Depth

Kata Wéber's screenplay structures the narrative around Laura's tenuous reintegration into family life while facing pressure to return to the prestigious dance company she inherited from her tyrannical late father. The script reveals backstory gradually through quick-cut flashback fragments showing young Laura navigating her father's abusive legacy and the development of her own addiction. These glimpses remain intentionally vague and abstract, relying heavily on visual poetry rather than dramatic specificity. The central dramatic question involves whether Laura can rebuild relationships with her mistrustful children, especially Felix who won't even eat ice cream she buys him, while deciding if returning to the career that enabled her self-destruction represents genuine healing or mere avoidance.

The screenplay's ambitions toward Chekhovian family drama are evident, with Mundruczó acknowledging inspiration from The Cherry Orchard in its exploration of an artistic family losing their ancestral home. The script attempts to layer financial anxiety, professional crisis, and domestic reconciliation while satirizing the wealthy Cape Cod social set through characters like George, the boorish benefactor threatening to withdraw company funding. These elements suggest sophisticated dramatic machinery at work. However, the execution reveals fundamental problems with emotional authenticity and narrative momentum. The dialogue leans heavily on explicit monologues where characters spell out their feelings rather than allowing subtext or behavior to communicate interior states. Laura describes having "a vacuum inside me which wants to suck out anything good in my life" in language that feels more like therapy-speak than lived experience.

Most damagingly, the screenplay struggles to generate genuine stakes from Laura's upper-class problems. Her primary conflicts involve whether to sell a spectacular beach house, how to salvage a prestigious arts institution, and navigating social embarrassment among wealthy neighbors. While addiction affects people across all economic strata, the screenplay frames recovery almost exclusively through the concerns of the privileged, making emotional investment difficult when the worst-case scenarios involve comfortable financial fallbacks. The climactic dramatic tension revolves around real estate portfolio decisions rather than deeper questions of identity or survival. The script also introduces relationships that exist purely as plot mechanics rather than organic human connections, including a beach encounter with recovering heroin addict Keegan who serves mainly to reinforce thematic points about sobriety and provide convenient kite-flying metaphors for freedom.

Acting and Characters: Adams Outperforms Her Material Considerably

Amy Adams anchors At the Sea with a performance that deserves far better material surrounding it. She plays Laura with brittle, withdrawn melancholy, conveying someone perpetually bracing against emotional undertow. Her sobriety registers not as solid ground but as a fragile sandbank one strong wave away from erosion. Adams doesn't perform breakdowns so much as she erodes, pressing conflict inward rather than externalizing it. The opening close-up of her sallow, exhausted face drumming with ferocious concentration at rehab immediately establishes someone fighting to maintain control. Adams brings subtlety and restraint even when the screenplay saddles her with obvious dialogue, finding moments of genuine vulnerability in quiet scenes like struggling to connect with Felix or navigating her daughter's hostility. However, even Adams cannot transform a role whose dramatic arc is largely complete before the film begins, having already experienced her breakthroughs during the unseen six months of therapy.

Murray Bartlett provides solid support as Martin, Laura's devoted but wary husband, creating believable chemistry through scenes suggesting an artistic couple struggling to communicate effectively. Bartlett plays cautious hope mixed with lingering mistrust convincingly, though the screenplay gives him little agency beyond reacting to Laura's journey. Chloe East (A Big Bold Beautiful Journey) makes a strong impression as Josie despite being written as one-dimensional rebellious teenager, while Redding Munsell captures Felix's cautious distance effectively. The film's most emotionally resonant moments involve these family interactions, particularly a beach scene where Felix suffers jellyfish stings that echo the original drunk driving incident, creating genuine tension Mundruczó rarely achieves elsewhere.

The supporting cast features recognizable faces in underwritten roles that feel like casting stunts rather than organic choices. Brett Goldstein appears briefly as Keegan the kite-salesman, functioning purely as symbolic device rather than character. Dan Levy plays Peter, Laura's former assistant now heading company PR, offering comic relief through neurotic energy but existing mainly to deliver exposition and thematic lectures about returning to work. Jenny Slate and Rainn Wilson appear as wealthy friends whose problems provide contrast to Laura's struggles, though Wilson's George veers toward cartoonish boorishness. The casting of primarily comedic actors in a serious drama creates tonal confusion, with performers struggling against dialogue that reduces them to archetypes. The most compelling presence is ironically young Laura in the flashback sequences, played silently by Mundruczó's daughter, whose wordless anguish communicates more psychological complexity than the screenplay grants her adult counterpart.

Direction and Technical Aspects: Visual Poetry Without Dramatic Foundation

Kornél Mundruczó directs with atmospheric polish that creates visual beauty while struggling to generate corresponding emotional depth. Cinematographer Yorick Le Saux shoots Cape Cod in soft, beige tones that emphasize the location's postcard prettiness, though this aesthetic choice ultimately works against the material by making Laura's crisis feel decorative rather than urgent. The pristine beaches, elegant architecture, and carefully composed frames create distance between audience and character, turning genuine pain into something to admire rather than experience. Mundruczó demonstrates keen visual intelligence in the flashback sequences, which employ abstract, poetic imagery divorced from literal narrative. These fragments utilize interpretive dance, conceptual staging, and evocative music to suggest Laura's psychological state more effectively than the present-day scenes manage through dialogue.

The most striking formal choice involves a flashback where young Laura, wearing retro headphones, walks down a barren street while Lykke Li's "I Follow Rivers" plays. Interpretive dancers gradually take over the frame in fluid movements that convey trauma and artistic legacy without words. These sequences show Mundruczó capable of inventive, emotionally resonant filmmaking when freed from conventional dramatic requirements. However, this visual sophistication creates fundamental disconnect with the straightforward, therapy-session quality of the present-day narrative. The direction and screenplay feel at odds, with Mundruczó reaching for operatic grandeur while Wéber grounds everything in pedestrian domestic drama. The result resembles watching two different films unsuccessfully merged.

Editors Dávid Jancsó and Ilka Janka Nagy employ the flashback fragments as visual punctuation, sometimes splicing them with blink-like brevity to suggest intrusive thoughts or memory gaps. This editing approach creates moments of formal daring while also disrupting whatever minimal narrative momentum the present-day story generates. The production design captures wealthy Cape Cod authenticity effectively, though the film's considerable visual resources only emphasize how little genuine drama exists beneath the glossy surface. Mundruczó abandons the long-take choreography and steadicam dynamism of Pieces of a Woman for a more conventional approach that doesn't serve this material particularly well, suggesting he hasn't found the right formal strategy for this specific story.

Music and Atmosphere: Metaphors Drowning Out Meaning

The score works alongside the visual design to create sustained melancholic atmosphere, though the mood feels imposed rather than organically emerging from character or situation. Sound design emphasizes waves, wind through grass, and environmental details that reinforce the sea metaphors Mundruczó employs relentlessly throughout. Every visual and sonic choice reminds viewers that Laura feels adrift, that she's drowning internally despite being on land, that recovery requires finding solid ground. The problem isn't that these metaphors are necessarily bad but rather that they're so heavily underlined, so thoroughly explained, that ambiguity evaporates. The film loves its own symbolism too much, treating every image as pregnant with meaning rather than allowing subtext to develop naturally.

The overall tone aims for quiet devastation, positioning itself as intimate character study examining the slow, exhausting swim toward healing. At the Sea wants to feel like watching someone barely keeping their head above water, making each small victory fraught with potential relapse. Occasionally, the film achieves this effect through fleeting moments like charged glances between Laura and Josie or sudden memories that hit like cold water. However, these successes remain isolated rather than sustained, with the atmosphere ultimately feeling more performative than genuinely immersive. The film's self-conscious artfulness prevents true emotional submersion, keeping viewers perpetually aware they're watching a carefully constructed drama rather than experiencing authentic human struggle.

Strengths and Weaknesses

What Works Well:

• Amy Adams delivers a raw, vulnerable performance that brings far more nuance than the screenplay provides.
• The wordless flashback sequences with young Laura demonstrate genuine visual and emotional poetry.
• Murray Bartlett and Chloe East create believable family dynamics despite limited development.
• The jellyfish scene generates authentic tension and emotional resonance.
• Cinematography creates atmospheric beauty even when that beauty works against dramatic urgency.

What Does Not Work:

• The screenplay reduces complex emotions to obvious monologues that explain rather than evoke.
• Upper-class problems like real estate decisions fail to generate genuine dramatic stakes.
• Heavy-handed metaphors about water, drowning, and floating are exhaustively underlined rather than suggested.
• Supporting characters exist as plot devices and thematic mouthpieces rather than fully realized people.
• The disconnect between visual sophistication and narrative shallowness creates tonal confusion.
• Casting primarily comedic actors in serious roles generates unfortunate awkwardness.
• The climactic scenes fail to achieve emotional catharsis, landing predictably without genuine revelation.

Final Verdict: A Prestige Drama More Interested in Appearing Deep Than Being Deep

Rating: 2.5/5 stars

At the Sea earns 2.5 out of 5 stars as a frustratingly hollow drama that mistakes visual poetry and thematic self-consciousness for genuine emotional depth. The rating reflects a film that secures a committed, technically excellent performance from Amy Adams while failing to provide dramatic foundation worthy of her effort. Mundruczó demonstrates continued skill as a visual stylist, and the flashback sequences prove he can create genuinely affecting moments when working in more abstract registers. However, the present-day narrative suffers from a screenplay that explains rather than explores, that tells rather than shows, and that ultimately has little new or meaningful to say about addiction, recovery, or family dysfunction despite its prestigious trappings.

This film will appeal primarily to Amy Adams completists eager to see another demonstration of her range, even in compromised material. Viewers who prioritize strong lead performances over narrative quality may find Adams's work sufficient reason to engage. Fans of European arthouse aesthetics who value atmospheric filmmaking and visual beauty over plot coherence might appreciate Mundruczó's approach. The film also works for audiences interested in addiction recovery stories willing to overlook the privileged lens through which this particular journey is framed. Those drawn to ensemble casts featuring Dan Levy, Brett Goldstein, Jenny Slate, and Rainn Wilson may be curious despite the underwritten roles these performers receive.

Conversely, viewers seeking genuinely moving or psychologically complex addiction dramas should look elsewhere, as At the Sea offers surface-level exploration dressed in pretentious clothing. Anyone frustrated by films that love their own metaphors more than their characters will find this maddening. Those who need dramatic stakes beyond wealthy people's real estate concerns won't find sufficient emotional investment here. Audiences expecting the formal audacity and raw power of Pieces of a Woman will be disappointed by how conventional and dramatically inert this follow-up feels. The film ultimately represents a significant step backward for Mundruczó, a director capable of far more than this vapid, self-satisfied exercise in prestige aesthetics. It's a drama that claims depth without earning it, that drowns in its own metaphors while mistaking that drowning for profundity.