Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch In Waves
2026 · Phuong Mai Nguyen · In Waves on Sightlines
5 things to watch and listen for on a first viewing, without spoilers, and 3 more once you have seen it. Each names something you can see or hear, the pattern it belongs to, and what noticing it gives you. How these keys work.
On a first viewing
Notice the sky's color shift with the mood of a scene. (light)
Nguyen washes scenes in pink and blue Californian light, using saturation and warmth instead of a camera lens to set the emotional temperature.
Payoff: The color is doing the feeling directly, not just decorating a scene that already has one. In the reading: affective color. The reading calls this affective color: the tint on screen is the feeling itself, not a description of it.
Watch the ocean seem to move AJ rather than the reverse. (staging)
When the water carries the scene, his body goes still while the world around him keeps moving.
Payoff: The ocean does the acting here, which is a very different feeling than watching someone surf. In the reading: movement of world. The reading calls this the movement of world: the character goes still and the world takes over the motion instead.
Notice the water look painted rather than simulated. (camera)
The waves carry a grained, hand-touched texture built from custom tools, closer to something you could imagine drawing than to a slick, photoreal simulation.
Payoff: The water looks made by a hand, which matters in a film this attentive to touch and loss.
Listen for electronic textures under the orchestral swell. (sound)
Rob and Oklou blend orchestral, electronic, and pop sounds, keeping the register close to the teenagers' own world while saving fuller orchestral weight for the ocean.
Payoff: The score tracks two different worlds, a teenage one and an oceanic one, before the story ever merges them.
Watch AJ's drawing hand move with the same care as Kristen's surfing. (performance)
The animation gives AJ's sketching and Kristen's surfing the same attentive, unhurried motion, treating drawing and riding a wave as versions of the same act.
Payoff: Two different passions get animated as the same kind of concentration, which quietly links the two leads.
The 3 rewatch keys open on this page when you choose "Seen it?".
Carry this in: Watch the ocean's color and motion as closely as the couple, since the film puts as much feeling into the water.