In Waves: wonderfully moving (review)
We already have the first nugget of Cannes 2026.
An animated film opening Critics’ Week is already a small event in itself. After the tidal wave Flow in 2024, and the rainbow Arco last year, this genre which is not a genre (finally) made a real place at the Cannes Film Festival. Of Jim Queen in Midnight Session at Blaise at Acid, there are everywhere this year, apart from in competition. 9 feature-length and 12 short animated films are presented on the Croisette, a record.
But back to In Waves. This first film by Franco-Vietnamese director Phuong Mai Nguyen is a little gem. It adapts the eponymous comic strip by Californian cartoonist AJ Dungo. A very personal story, that of his love story with Kristen and their fight against cancer.
A graduate of Gobelins and La Poudrière, the young filmmaker takes it on with virtuosity, describing this tragic romance against a backdrop of skateboarding and surfing with great delicacy. It begins with a cute, seemingly banal encounter at a high school party. He’s shy and awkward, and pushes her around on the dance floor. He’s afraid of water, she’s going to teach him how to ride the waves. It’s love splash.
In Waves slips on the clichés, and from the adolescent idyll we soon shift to adult drama. It’s visually stunning, but also very finely written. Flashbacks to the origins of surfing in Hawaii alternate with jumps in time giving us little by little a glimpse of the inevitable fate. We let ourselves be carried away, and we leave amazed and with wet eyes from these 90 minutes of pure emotions like we come out of a perfect hit.
Phuong Mai Nguyen hits hard with this first attempt, and impresses with his mastery of both animation and narration. We also admire his rendering of the drawing (In Waves incorporates real creations by the real AJ) and his work with the actors, who were central to the film’s development. We see Lyna Khoudri playing under the image, as much as we hear it. It’s cinema, quite simply.
In Waves. By Phuong Mai Nguyen. With Lyna Khoudri, Rio Vega, Paul Kircher. In theaters July 1.
