Synopsis
In the Waves is an expressive documentary that depicts the life of 80 years old Joan Alma Mills in her aging coastal village. Following the death of her younger sister, Joan finds herself confronted by the fragility of life. As she tries to come to terms with her loss Joan searches for meaning in the natural world around her. Weaving intimate thoughts with lyrical imagery, In the Waves was crafted by Joan’s granddaughter Jacquelyn Mills. In essence, the film is an intergenerational love-letter, an ebb and flow between dream and reality, past and present, a glimpse of childhood and an encounter with the end-of-life.
A word from Tënk
Hands, legs, faces; with great tenderness, documentarian Jacquelyn Mills films the aging body of Joan Alma Mills, her grandmother—a body so beautiful in its worn state. Joan is struggling to recover from the death of her younger sister, navigating a kind of quiet mourning, a reflective sadness that prompts both the filmmaker and her grandmother to meditate on time and death. Mills constructs a family fresco that oscillates between dream and real life, between childhood and old age, renewal and end. By juxtaposing life that is beginning with life that is ending, Mills' camera reflects on the inexorable passage of time. Through this family portrait, this cinema of affliction, Mills offers an ode to a love that transcends generations, generations separated by many things but united by nothing except perhaps the death that approaches one and spares the other. A love letter, but also a farewell letter, In the Waves touches on the most universal and ephemeral aspects of our existence.
Charlotte Lehoux
Programmer
