“Laurynas Bareiša utilizes that concept of repetition and familiarity with beautiful, tangible simplicity.”

The rolling, repetitive loop of a massive pop hit marks a pivotal point in Drowning Dry when two sisters close out a family meal with a synchronized dance. Donna Lewis’ “I Love You Always Forever,” globally ubiquitous upon release in 1996, tumbles from a patio speaker as Ernesta (Gelmine Glemzaite) and Juste (Agne Kaktaite) ease into a routine from youth, a callback of bemused spontaneity and gentle familiarity. The simple performance over an unending drumbeat reveals a memento of sisterhood even if the adult siblings more or less go through the motions, husbands Lukas (Paulius Markevičius) and Tomas (Giedrius Kiela) an indifferent audience. Before the song ends, the couples’ respective children, Kristupas and Utre, interrupt and ask to take a swim in the adjacent lake and the weekend retreat skips forward into the unknown. In Laurynas Bareiša’s assured, hypnotic second feature, the imperfect choreography of love and relationships, and all the expectations intermixed, pulse out of step with grief when unexpected but seemingly unavoidable tragedy breaks the formulaic arrangement of life.

Ernesta and Lukas, alongside son Kristupas, are a superficially sound core, but their small family unit is underpinned with anxiety. Her husband is an MMA fighter while Ernesta has not worked in several years, a circumstance that weighs on her especially. Although Lukas wins a match immediately before the trio head to meet her sister and family, their finances are variable if not dire, details incrementally inferred as if eavesdropping on a conversation. In contrast, Juste and Tomas appear comparatively well-off and secure. His flashy new truck and aggressive driving are immediate calling cards for overcompensation, though, as blatant and feeble as his naked proposition to his wife while they are unpacking at her parents’ holiday cottage. When the families gather at that lake house, the juxtapositions of the two husbands pit masculinities against one another, though Bareiša is meticulous in allowing the contrast to submerge into the undercurrent between the bond of Ernesta and Juste, pivotal actions taken by both the spouses immersed within recollections of the sisters.

Drowning Dry breaks the surface in its survey of grief with a persuasive, stunning narrative twist that shifts focus from certainties to perception and recollection. The film’s title refers to a rare, non-medical (and somewhat controversial) condition where water aspiration into a child’s lungs develops following a near-drowning incident, sometimes hours afterwards. The action of delayed response is a metaphor for the relationships of both Ernesta and Juste, and the traumas gradually inflicted that ultimately emerge as acute. Sometimes suffocation appears marked by one incident, but the wounds are sustained in another: at the very least, our recollections cycle memory through sudden miscalculations, sorting and shifting meaning. Bareiša structures the film through the inventory of loss, navigating and intertwining specific remembrances of the sisters as mothers and sisters in the wake of trauma.

In the latter half of Drowning Dry, another nostalgic radio mainstay coasts over the bounce of synthesized beats, the Lighthouse Family’s “High.” This midtempo tune is as breezy and light as the earlier pop confection, and likeminded in its broad, generic lyrics around ‘love remembered forever’. While it’s interchangeable in formula, it is distinct in resplendent monotony, as well. Laurynas Bareiša utilizes that concept of repetition and familiarity with beautiful, tangible simplicity in Drowning Dry. As the filmmaker charts the delayed recall of each sister and subsequent uncertainties in courses forward, he rotates into an inclusive retrospective of grief, exquisite in arcs lifted from ordinary into timeless, almost melting away.