Kate Can’t Swim

Kate Can’t Swim sets up in a large city before moving locations to a wilderness cabin. And for a moment when the characters arrived at the remote cabin, I thought maybe it was going to turn into a horror movie. Alas, no. It’s just a bunch of hipsters with relationship problems. Even still, Kate Can’t Swim is yet another piece of cinematic anti-cabin propaganda. Even if you don’t get murdered, apparently going to a cabin will surely ruin your relationship.

Protagonist Kate has a comfortable life. She lives in a big city with her long-term boyfriend, Pete. Kate is a writer while Pete has a more stable job with the potential for promotion and relocation. Kate’s stable, comfortable life is thrown off when her best friend, Em returns from Paris. Kate and Em’s relationship is perhaps too close, though neither woman acknowledge it. But what shocks Kate is that Em’s come home with a new partner, a boyfriend. The previously lesbian-identifying Em now has purple hair and sexual fluidity. And her new boyfriend, Nick invites Kate and Pete to his cabin so their respective relationships can devolve over the rest of the film’s run time.

This is a film that knows its own limitations and works within them. It’s a small, character-driven story. A story that mostly takes place in an isolated, singular location. These are all intelligent choices to make a story that can be told with limited budget. I admire that too. One aspect I didn’t admire was the filter over every shot of the movie. Perhaps to make the visuals look a little more polished, there’s a soft, washed-out filter to Kate Can’t Swim. It annoyed me throughout the entire film.

There is a realism that works about Kate Can’t Swim. These characters feel like real people with real flaws and imperfections. The acting helps too. It never feels like I’m watching actors. It just feels like I’m watching some flawed, frequently boring hipsters. There’s insight within this realism and a talent for translating that onto the screen. The best scene in the film is Kate and Pete’s third act argument. That really felt like you’re watching a real couple fight. But even in that scene, my question was why do I care? I admire the realism, but Kate Can’t Swim lacked the hook to make me care about whether or not this realistic but ultimately fictional relationship breaks down.

Kate Can’t Swim has various positives and a basic level of competence which I admire, but can’t recommend. This is one of those instances of there just not being enough here. There’s too many other films like it, even within the WLW film genre. I was consistently unenthusiastic about the film. I dithered on whether or not to give this a low mixed review or high negative review. Ultimately, my ruling came down to that damn filter over the movie. I didn’t like it and the movie never offered enough positives to counteract that admittedly minor critique.

Overall rating: 4.8/10

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