There are moments in Breakwater – the feature-length debut by Max Morgan – that make you feel, even briefly, that a breakthrough is underway, that a character is going to come to an epiphany that will change the direction of their life. But as is the case too often in life, those epiphanies never truly arrive. And sometimes, they arrive in ways we never anticipated.

Otto (Daniel McNamee) is a young music student at Oxford. He’s dating Lucy (Agnes Halladay), whom he visits her on the coast for the summer. There’s something strange about their relationship: she doesn’t drink alcohol because he doesn’t drink alcohol, and he doesn’t want to be intimate when she wants to be intimate. Her friends can sense an unease in the air, a fundamental disconnect between the two. Otto eventually finds himself spotting a mysterious, gruff man named John (Shaun Paul McGrath), and this sets Otto on a path of self-discovery and – perhaps more accurately – self-destruction.

From the tone-setting first shot of the film, we feel a sense of dread, even if we don’t know why. The film has muted colours, reflecting a moody coast of Suffolk, and it’s clear that each character has their own devastatingly complicated inner workings that only they can feel but that do end up expressed in a variety of ways. This is a film filled with flawed people who more often than not don’t know what they’re doing.

Everyone in this film is looking for something, some kind of direction, some kind of way forward. These characters feel guilt, judgment, shame, or mixture of both. Otto often looks to God – he found Catholicism as a young adult despite not having been raised religious – for answers or at least a hint of a direction. John looks to fishing to deal with his internal maelstrom and social ostracization. And Lucy finds herself aimless, goalless, returning to comforts that never really fit her in the first place.

More than anything, though, these characters are looking for a sense of control. Control of their lives, their feelings, and their actions. Otto, especially, seeks to control Lucy in many ways while also looking for a force that will tell him what to do. It’s scary forging one’s own path, and it’s scary knowing we can’t control everything in our lives. This film portrays this doubtlessly complex concept well while touching on masculinity, power dynamics, guilt, grief, and dealing with trauma.

Writer-director Max Morgan handles these complicated ideas deftly, and what could potentially be an overwrought hodgepodge of tonal whiplash ends up blending and mixing into a complex emotional drama. Understated performances do these concepts justice, and the isolation felt by each of these characters makes their interactions with each other all the more fascinating.

Breakwater is an impressive and assured debut from Max Morgan. Its world premiere took place during the 33rd edition of Raindance, which happens from June 18th to the 27th.