Even with its brief runtime, Love at Sea meanders and kind of loses the plot a bunch of times, but would it even be a French New Wave film if it didn't? The descriptor of something being a feature rather than a bug comes to mind, because Love at Sea aims to capture life and young love in all its highs and lows, and to that end, I think it works. It's very easy to drift in and out of the film, and to that end, it's not exactly gripping, but watching it in such a way kind of works. It's hazy and tumultuous and scattershot and often plays out like a series of memories, and some beautiful-looking ones at that.
To add to that, the star of the show here is the visuals, which takes Love at Sea from being decent to often very good. Parts are in black and white, and other parts are in particularly striking color, and I couldn't pick which look I liked more. Both are impactful for different reasons, and the way it looks throughout is simply excellent. Did I fully understand why some scenes were in black and white and some were in color? Nope, but I couldn't work out why that approach was taken in something like Oppenheimer, either (reading other people's reviews of that film cleared it up). Maybe that's a me problem. Call me color-colorblind.
Anyone who's not crazy about the French films that made an impact in the late 1950s and then throughout the 1960s probably won't find Love at Sea makes them a fan of that movement in cinema history, but anyone partial to a movie like this should check it out. It's slow, breezy, and downbeat in a unique way, even when it's not exactly exciting to watch, and it looks beautiful throughout. I generally liked it overall.
