Adrift (2018)

There's a scene in Adrift where a character folds a pile of clothes while talking about loss. That's it. That's the scene. No swelling strings, no dramatic reaction shot, just hands smoothing fabric and a voice working through grief. And somehow it hit harder than most films that throw everything at the wall to make you feel something. That's the strange, quiet power this film carries, and why I'm still thinking about it days later despite the fact that I checked whether my tea had gone cold at least twice during the runtime.

This Bosnian film, my stop on the A-Z World Movie Tour, is essentially a long, unguarded conversation between two people who've long since exhausted the pleasantries. Two characters, mostly one room, and a weight of shared history pressing down on every exchange. It's the kind of film that feels less like watching a story unfold and more like accidentally overhearing something you probably weren't meant to hear.

The minimalism is genuinely both the film's greatest strength and its most testing quality. There's no plot machinery to hide behind, no clever structure to give you something to admire from a safe distance. You're just in there with these two people as they argue, reminisce, and occasionally just exist in the same space without speaking. That's a lot to ask of an audience, and I won't pretend it always works. There were stretches where I felt the film testing my patience rather than rewarding it. But then a line would land, or a look would pass between the two leads, and I'd feel that slow leak of emotion you can't quite locate or stop.

The dialogue isn't showy. Nobody's delivering speeches that belong on a motivational poster. What it does instead is dig into the kind of questions that don't have clean answers: what does it really mean to know another person? Can you ever fully outrun who you were? The film doesn't resolve those questions so much as sit with them, uncomfortably, until the credits roll. It reminded me a little of Winter Brothers (2017), another film from that part of Europe that uses silence and restraint to say more than most films manage with twice the noise.

The two leads carry an enormous amount on their faces alone. You don't get the sense that they're performing so much as excavating something real between them. The director trusts them completely, using silence like a scalpel rather than a gap to fill, and for the most part that trust is justified. When the film breathes, it breathes properly. When it stalls, it really stalls, and you feel every second of it.

So where does that leave me? Three stars feels right. This isn't a film you enjoy in any conventional sense, it's one you absorb. You let it sit in you and see what it does over time. The honest answer is that its stickiness in hindsight is what pushes it above the midpoint for me. A film that bores you in the moment but haunts you afterwards is doing something right, even if it's making you work for it.

If you've got a rainy afternoon, a tolerance for introspection, and no particular need to be entertained in the traditional sense, I'd say give it a go. If you need momentum, incident, or anything resembling a dramatic score, give it a very wide berth. Adrift is for a specific mood, and when it meets you there, it's genuinely something.

Rating: ★★★  | Year: 2018  | Watched: 2025-05-29

View on Letterboxd →

Where to watch

Watch in the UK
Stream: MGM Plus Amazon Channel
Buy: Sky Store
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi

Watch in the US
Stream: Hulu
Rent: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon US

Affiliate disclosure: Movies With Macca may earn a small commission on purchases or subscriptions started via these links. It costs you nothing extra.

Related on Movies With Macca

More from Iceland: Winter Brothers (2017) · Unknown Soldier (2017)
More from the 2010s: Wonder (2017) · Beautiful Boy (2018) · The Witch (2015) · What We Do in the Shadows (2014)
More thriller: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) · Angst (1983) · The Long Walk (2025) · Punishment Park (1971)
More romance: The Eagle (1925) · The Last Picture Show (1971) · The General (1926) · The Docks of New York (1928)