‘What Doesn’t Float’ is Smooth Sailing Through Messy New York Lives

All life came from the water. This biological fact of the evolution of advanced life forms is then borne out in sociological histories of human civilisation: name a great city of past or present, and water – a source of irrigation, transport, and defence – is a main feature. And around all five boroughs of New York – the perennially on-screen, alive city – is lots and lots of water. 

This fact rarely makes it into such cinematic explorations beyond a passing look across the East River or ferry past the Statue of Liberty (New Jersey’s docks, just across the Hudson, are arguably more present in cinema). Director Luca Balser and writer Shauna Fitzgerald know, however, that water and existential dread connect all New Yorkers; What Doesn’t Float – a collection of seven narratively disparate vignettes – starts from this source of life, death, opportunity, and frustration to explore the tragicomic, mundane travails of life across the city, possibly even on the same day.

Life on the water’s edge has never looked less romantic in this series of crises and chance encounters. Many great storytellers believe the middle is the best place to start, and each mini-tale adheres to this logic excellently, beginning with a sense of lives, relationships, and established goals and escalating within seconds. Tempers run short and in most of these scenes – here, the frenetic pace of New York life is no place for the sensitive or sentimental. But there are strange moments of tenderness in dreams deferred and just-missed opportunities sparkling through; that they are almost immediately washed away does not lessen their impact. 

The tone sits somewhere between mumblecore and Tim Robinson’s beautifully absurdist I Think You Should Leave. If read seriously, many shaky-cam and classical scoring touches feel like pretentious ‘arthouse’ flourishes. However, Balser and his team seem to be working with an ironic, heightened reality, bringing it closer to a Netflix sketch comedy series with added nihilism.  

The end result may be slight, but even if the stakes are (not often) life or death, every actor across the anthology, as well as the camera’s lens and script’s naturalistic bent, understands the outcome in each moment could not be more vital. This interconnected human truths, and the longing these engender, both undercuts and heightens these daily successes and tragedies. At a brisk 70 minute run time, What Doesn’t Float sails smoothly. If the vignettes trade in irony and anxiety, the glimpses offered into little worlds serve to remind us that, like the need for water, many experiences are universal.

by Carmen Paddock

Carmen is a Pennsylvanian transplant to Glasgow who writes about film, television, and opera. A lover of maximalism and musicals, much of her writing focuses on cross-media adaptation. Favourite films include West Side Story, 10 Things I Hate About You, Ludwig, Cabaret, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, and Moulin Rouge!. She holds a Masters in International Film Business from the University of Exeter / London Film School. Follow her on Twitter @CarmenChloie