INTO THE SEA
INTO THE SEA focuses on a put-together organized mom, OLIVIA, who begins to unravel while pursuing her own passions as a writer.
As a diagnosed, bipolar depressive, Olivia decides to go off her meds, consequently tearing her own family apart. This intimate portrayal of someone with a mental health issue provides a heartwarming story about people searching for their passions in life. The characters feel real and help to create a moving story about a woman searching for herself.
Olivia feels like she could read well for Millennials who are constantly trying to, “love, and feel beautiful, and brilliant, and fearless.” It’s a sentiment that reads strongly within this generation that is constantly vying for attention, and reads well despite the age difference. While Olivia struggles with her responsibilities to be an organized and responsible mom, she also fights with her personal demons of feeling more than just a robotic automaton who repeats the same tasks on the daily. While her manic episodes are eerie, they clearly portray the madness within her mind, and make her a relatable and understanding character. The adults around her are clearly aware of her condition, and continue to make an effort to take care of her, while her own children fight to find their mom in the middle of her depression.
Jesper is also an attractive male lead, as a bookish and handsome professor and Pulitzer-prize winning novelist and poet. He clearly cares for his family, and despite his absence from his children’s childhood, obviously means well. When he returns to take care of his children, he demonstrates to be the responsible and reliable adult that the family needed. While Folke is isolative and moody, with resentment towards his father, the other two daughters: Britt and Mathilde, are written beautifully and clearly portray being their mother’s children. Both are unique and have a fresh perspective that only a writer’s child could see.
Ultimately, it’s these relationships that anchor this film that discusses mental health issues in an honest and real way that can be easily digestible for a wide audience.
INTO THE SEA displays an intimate portrait of a family who has been disrupted by mental health issues but learns how to persevere despite it all. It delivers a passionate message about the “everythingness of life” and the “nothingness of death”.