Seagrass

Directed by Meredith Hama-Brown, Seagrass follows Ally Maki’s Judith and Luke Roberts’ Steve as they arrive at a coastal couples-therapy retreat with their two small children. Hama-Brown, armed with her own screenplay, has infused Seagrass with an exceedingly, excessively deliberate sensibility that remains a problem from start to finish, with the movie, as a result, suffering from a palpable arms-length feel that persists for the duration of its often interminable 115 minute running time. The padded-out atmosphere is perpetuated by an ongoing emphasis on seriously, aggressively inconsequential sequences and episodes (eg the youngest daughter’s ongoing insistence that her grandmother’s ghost is hanging around), and although the narrative admittedly does boast a very small handful of compelling moments (eg a fellow patient discusses why she doesn’t want children of her own), Seagrass’ big emotional revelations of its closing stretch are, perhaps unsurprisingly, unable to pack the emotional punch for which Hama-Brown is obviously striving – with the end result a misfire that might’ve worked as a short but has no business running almost two hours.

* out of ****