{"id":684487,"date":"2026-07-10T16:10:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-10T16:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/684487\/"},"modified":"2026-07-10T16:10:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T16:10:08","slug":"learning-to-breathe-under-water-review-an-empathetic-crowdpleaser","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/684487\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Learning to Breathe Under Water’ Review: An Empathetic Crowdpleaser"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tA 25-foot fibreglass model of a shark \u2014 or its rear half, at least \u2014 adorning the roof of an otherwise ordinary terraced house in suburban Oxford, England, the Headington Shark is the kind of local curiosity that makes any casual passersby think, \u201cThere must be a story there.\u201d And there is: It\u2019s a work of protest art devised in 1986 by sculptor John Buckley and homeowner Bill Heine as a statement against nuclear warfare and military airstrikes. Forty years later, however, \u201cLearning to Breathe Under Water<\/a>\u201d imagines quite a different one, taking the eccentric artwork as the starting point for a fictional tale of grief, healing and household repair, and as the visual cue for its own eccentric stylistic flourishes. If the real-life shark sculpture was a controversial point of community debate, however, Rebekah Fortune<\/a>\u2018s highly likable, heart-on-sleeve tearjerker won\u2019t be nearly as divisive.<\/p>\n

\n\tWarmly received at Karlovy Vary \u2014 where it premiered in the Special Screenings sidebar \u2014 \u201cLearning to Breathe Under Water\u201d should continue to please crowds on the festival circuit before being scooped up by indie distributors with an eye for offbeat but audience-friendly (and indeed family-friendly) fare. Sympathetic turns from Oscar nominee Maria Bakalova<\/a> and BAFTA nominee Rory Kinnear<\/a> will help raise the film\u2019s profile, though its best performance comes from 11-year-old Irish actor Ezra Carlisle<\/a> (recently seen in \u201cHokum\u201d), who\u2019s immensely appealing but never cloying as our gravely earnest, often accidentally funny protagonist and narrator.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor the purposes of this tale, the Headington Shark has been relocated to an otherwise nondescript family home in an nondescript Irish town, where middle-aged British artist Peter (Kinnear) and his pre-teen son Leo (Carlisle) have lived a quiet, sedate life together since the death of their wife and mother, respectively, some years ago. Peter installed the peculiar sculpture in the throes of grief, though he\u2019s loath to explain why to anyone; it\u2019s a curiously attention-seeking act from a man who would rather recede from society. Bright, curious Leo is more socially engaged, though he keeps his friends at school strictly separate from his home life, where Peter\u2019s ongoing depression dictates the mood and their joint routine. In his bedroom, where a gaping hole in the ceiling has been cut to accommodate the shark, Leo murmurs his secret thoughts into the beast\u2019s synthetic belly; it\u2019s one-sided therapy, but he feels better for it.<\/p>\n

\n\tA concerned teacher recommends Anya (Bakalova), a freewheeling Bulgarian au pair in need of a place to stay \u2014 and while Peter is initially reluctant to let anyone into this melancholy household of two, he concedes he could use some domestic help. As nannies go, Anya isn\u2019t Mary Poppins levels of magical, but she\u2019s cheery and kind-hearted, and that goes a long way. Leo visibly lightens and blossoms under her care; Peter is a harder nut to crack, but with her encouragement, he makes tentative steps toward rejoining the outside world. Though Richard Brabin\u2019s script has its share of kooky humor, it\u2019s pleasingly grounded and credible regarding the characters\u2019 internal growth: The film mostly doesn\u2019t trade in drastically transformative arcs or pat solutions, but incremental, hard-won changes of heart and mind.<\/p>\n

\n\tFortune\u2019s previous feature, the 2017 teen drama \u201cJust Charlie,\u201d sensitively examined an adolescent soccer prodigy\u2019s gender dysphoria and trans awakening, and she once again demonstrates a gentle aptitude for articulating complex emotional struggles from a youthful point of view. Assisted by naive animated intrusions on the frame that illustrate his singular imagination and frequently lateral trains of thought, Leo\u2019s narration is endearingly odd but not overly cutesy, and Carlisle\u2019s excellent, unaffected performance sells the character\u2019s earnest vulnerability with just a hint of deadpan irony. \u201cPeople say that, but they don\u2019t laugh,\u201d he replies when Anya says he\u2019s funny; with his tense body language and solemnly set brow, he inspires as much concern as amusement.<\/p>\n

\n\tOccasionally, \u201cLearning to Breathe Under Water\u201d cuts corners: Fortune and production designer May Davies find a visual shorthand for the characters\u2019 psychological state in the ocean-blue shades of the house interiors, as dictated by Peter, versus the sunshine yellows of his wife\u2019s personal effects, hidden away in the attic. A third-act shift toward recovery happens a little too quickly; a heated speech by Anya about the symbolic significance of the sculpture lands a little too directly on the nose. But Fortune\u2019s thoughtful little charmer accomplishes the tricky task of dramatizing trauma and healing in terms accessible to all ages. It doesn\u2019t patronize its young protagonist by going over his head, while still identifying those aspects of adult life \u2014 why people die, lie, leave, or build sharks in their roof \u2014 he won\u2019t understand for a while yet. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 25-foot fibreglass model of a shark \u2014 or its rear half, at least \u2014 adorning the roof…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":684488,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,228324,225473,228325,13916,2839,228326,159066,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-684487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-ezra-carlisle","tag-karlovy-vary-film-festival","tag-learning-to-breathe-under-water","tag-maria-bakalova","tag-movies","tag-rebekah-fortune","tag-rory-kinnear","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=684487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684487\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/684488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=684487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=684487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=684487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}