What do you get when you combine the world of high fashion with surfing, and a bit of working through grief?  You get Rip Tide (2017), a dangerous sounding title if you are familiar with how the ocean works, but is the name of a film that remarkably makes sense given how I have so far described it.  Indeed, I was not making a joke.  All three of the elements mentioned in the first sentence are in it, and it covers them in a tidy package coming in at just under an hour and a half.  Even with the short run time, there are moments that feel a bit drawn out, but they are forgivable.  And I would not have found this movie had it not been for Netflix’s “Feel Good Movies” category.  Sure, there are elements of a romantic comedy here, but there is still a little more going on with it.

Before Cora Hamilton (Debby Ryan) feels any kind of literal Rip Tide, she is a young and up-and-coming model on the New York fashion scene.  Magazines are hailing her as the next big hit, and her career is poised to hit star status.  What derails it is an innocent faux pas during a clothing shoot where she makes some alteration to a dress she is about to pose in for the cameras.  The designer on set berates her for doing so, saying some of the meanest things you can to a person.  Stunned, Cora runs off the set and, with phones recording, trips going down stairs in a crying mess.  This is not only a problem for her, but for her mother, Sofia (Danielle Carter).  She runs one of the most successful modeling agencies, and it is clear that she has her own agenda for her daughter.  Pointedly, this does not include college, something in which Cora expresses interest.  Between Sofia’s demands and the social media blitz destroying her reputation, Cora decides to take up her aunt Margot’s (Genevieve Hegney), Sofia’s sister, offer to come visit in Australia.  Margot runs a surf school, something she once co-owned with her deceased husband Caleb (Jeremy Lindsay Taylor).  Though it had been a couple years, his passing is still being processed by Margot.  All the same, she is excited for the arrival of her niece.  It has been ten years since Cora had been there, and somewhere along the way she had forgotten what life is like in out-of-the-way Australia.  She must adjust to chickens coming into homes, random people showing up unannounced, and, perhaps most importantly, no wi-fi in the house.  Having the internet is no blessing for her, though, as when she finally makes it online, it is clear that the fervor over her embarrassing moment is still alive on the world wide web.  Margot senses Cora’s need to let loose, and invokes a version of baseball that involves hitting coconuts and tomatoes instead of balls.  The fun she has with it finally opens her up, and soon she is getting into the water to learn to surf.  It helps that one of the instructors at Margot’s school, Tom (Andrew Creer), is a muscle-bound hunk.  It also happens that this part of Australia is about to have a festival celebrating 100 years of women in surfing.  As part of the festivities, they hoped to have a display of different swimwear used in the intervening years.  At the suggestion of Margot’s mother-in-law, Bee (Valerie Bader), Cora is asked to make the bathing suits.  She takes to this because while she clearly needed a break from her previous job, she maintains a passion for designing clothes.  Doing so, though, brings out a side of her still attached to her former world, unfortunately.  To test out her sketches, she calls on Chicka (Naomi Sequeira), a girl who works at the school, and a few of her friends.  When one of them suggests some alterations, in a sequence eerily similar to what drove her from New York, Cora gets rudely defensive.  It takes another pep talk from Bee to remind her it is okay to be passionate, but not to lash out at people because of it.  Yet, the big test comes when Sofia finally phones and gets Cora on the line.  The purpose for the call is to tell Cora that she has been offered a lucrative contract to be the face for a new clothing line back in the United States.  Sofia makes it known that Cora must accept the terms and informs her daughter that the plane that will return her will leave the next day before abruptly hanging up.  Cora feels compelled to comply.  On the way out, when confronted about the decision, she tells off Margot and Tom.  For Margot, it is about never getting back into the water after Caleb’s death even though she once was a champion surfer.  With Tom, it is about not finishing the surfboards he has been designing.  To Cora, at least she is accomplishing something.  Yet, when she gets to the airport and the pilot of the small plane says they cannot take the family heirloom sewing machine Bee had gifted her, Cora takes it as a sign she should not go.  This is just in time, too, because when she gets back to Margot’s place, her aunt has decided to go surfing as a major storm is arriving.  Cora must paddle out to save Margot.  Cora also patches things up with Tom, who later gives her the surfboard he has been crafting.  Then, as the festival fashion show is underway, Sofia surprises everyone by being in attendance.  We close with Cora sitting on the beach with her aunt and mom, telling them that she is deciding between colleges in Australia and the United States.

Rip Tide is a sweet movie.  I think the reason why it has not received much attention here in the United States is because it is an Australian movie.  This is a shame because it is a well-crafted production.  The drawn-out parts I mentioned in the introduction are more a product of me getting tired of some of the repeated angst on Cora’s part.  Still, this leads well into the Catholic discussion.  People have such feelings because they think they can control the events around them.  This is where surfing serves as an apt metaphor.  We cannot create the perfect wave, at least not in nature.  I am not counting wave pools at water parks.  That desirable crest is called forth by God.  In order to find it, we must surrender.  This is tough, and modern society wants us to believe in the illusion that we can make anything happen.  This includes when we are grieving.  Margot cannot let go of Caleb.  Throughout the film, she has visions of him still being present.  And because he died while surfing, this is what keeps her from getting back out on her board.  Bee, of course, has the right perspective on Margot’s situation.  In talking to Cora about it, who is hurting in her own way, Bee says that sometimes when we are sad, the last thing we want to do is that which makes us feel better.  There is truth in this statement.  We tell ourselves that to be happy again would be a betrayal of whatever it is that is causing us to feel the loss.  In the process, many Christians close themselves off to God in these kinds of moments.  He is the true “better” thing to which Bee is referring, and the One best equipped to heal us.

The one criticism I would give Cora in Rip Tide is how she arrived at her decision to go to Australia.  In spiritual direction, we are taught that it is best not to make life altering decisions when we are in a state of desolation.  At the same time, one can look at her sojourn in the Land Down Under as a retreat.  Either way, the good thing is that it has a happy ending, and I will take that any day.