Very few films about grief are able to sit with loss without turning it into a lesson, a speech, or an emotional endurance test. Phuong Mai Nguyen’s adaptation of AJ Dungo’s 2019 graphic novel “In Waves” understands that grief does not work like that. It does not arrive neatly, and it does not leave just because someone has learned how to move forward. It comes back in unexpected ways, reshaping how someone sees love, memory, and even the places that once made them feel alive.
“In Waves” follows AJ (Will Sharpe), a young, introverted skateboarder living in the sunnier stretches of Southern California. His friend Francisco tries to pull him out of his shell by dragging him to school events, including dances where AJ looks like he would rather disappear into the wall than make small talk. It is there that he meets Kristen (Stephanie Hsu), a confident and fearless surfer who is emotionally generous, stubbornly hopeful, and the kind of person who seems to move through the world with a certainty AJ has not found yet.
When Kristen tries to introduce AJ to surfing, he can barely stay afloat. Francisco jokingly calls him aquaphobic, and AJ’s skills in the water are nowhere near what he can do on a skateboard. Still, whenever he is with Kristen, he feels more alive than he does grinding rails or curbs. That contrast is one of the things “In Waves” captures so beautifully. AJ is comfortable on concrete, where every rail, curb, and landing gives him something solid to control. Kristen thrives in the water, where movement requires trust, instinct, and surrender.
That makes her surfing lessons feel like more than simple romantic bonding. Kristen is not just teaching AJ how to catch a wave. She is teaching him how to let go, how to listen to his body, and how to understand surfing as something tied to history and culture. Her impromptu lesson about Duke Kahanamoku broadens the film’s sense of place and deepens the meaning of surfing as something shaped by joy, resistance, and survival.
But “In Waves” is also, at its heart, a first love story, and it captures that feeling with such ease. It starts with AJ nervously trying to string enough words together to keep a conversation with Kristen going. Kristen, by comparison, is more self-assured and slightly ahead of him emotionally. She seems to know who she is in ways AJ has not figured out how to articulate for himself. Surfing becomes her outlet, a way of channeling everything she cannot quite say out loud. Each ride becomes a way of connecting with herself, with AJ, and with a future that still feels wide open.
That is why Kristen is able to draw AJ out of his shell without making it feel like she is “fixing” him. She simply gives him space to become braver. And because the film gives their relationship so much warmth and specificity, their connection feels real almost immediately. Through the animation, their chemistry comes through in the way they look at each other, talk to each other, and slowly let their guards down. Even their text messages carry that very specific nervous thrill of realizing something might be turning into more than friendship.
In one especially sweet moment, AJ texts Kristen after his first surfing lesson. What begins as a simple “What are you eating now?” turns into something more as the three dots leave both AJ and the audience waiting for what comes next. It is such a small detail, but it says so much about where they are emotionally. These are two people still figuring out the rhythm of each other, testing the waters of first love one message at a time.
There is also a beautiful moment when AJ visits Kristen, but she cannot let him inside because her parents are not home. So they simply sit outside under the night sky, wrapped in each other’s arms. It is dazzling to look at, not because it is some giant spectacle, but because it is so purely simple. The soft piano playing in the background feels like a gentle exhale, giving the moment the kind of intimacy first love often has before either person fully understands how much it will mean later. Even when AJ has to leave, a perfectly timed rain begins to fall across his face, and as he lifts his hands into the air, he looks less like someone walking away and more like someone changed by the possibility of being loved back.
AJ and Kristen’s relationship grows through the usual rituals of first love. There are surf lessons and pizza dates, late-night talks about school and what comes after, and joking arguments about cities and futures. But Nguyen treats these moments with enough specificity that they never feel like stock romantic milestones. Kristen’s ease in the water contrasts with AJ’s fear of it. His sketchbook slowly fills with waves and surfboards. Their time together starts to feel less like a series of cute moments and more like the private routines of two people quietly imagining a life together.
That makes it all the more devastating when Kristen receives the news that she has cancer. But “In Waves” does not allow her diagnosis to erase the romance that came before it. Instead, it changes the meaning of every memory AJ carries. The surf lessons begin to carry more emotional weight. The lazy moments linger longer. Their time together becomes a spark of inspiration for AJ, even as those memories become harder for him to revisit.
That is where “In Waves” understands grief so well. It does not arrive all at once. It builds quietly in the background, changing the way AJ sees the things that once made him feel closest to Kristen. The ocean is no longer just the place where she taught him how to let go. It becomes a space of memory, fear, love, and eventual release. The same is true of his drawings, which begin as expressions of fascination and affection before becoming a way for him to hold onto moments that feel impossible to preserve.
Nguyen’s animation becomes essential to that emotional experience. “In Waves” uses movement, color, and negative space to give shape to feelings AJ cannot always put into words. The skateboarding sequences have a grounded rhythm to them, full of friction, impact, and control. The surfing scenes, by contrast, feel looser and more fluid, as if the water is asking AJ to surrender to something larger than himself. The film is at its most affecting when the animation lets memory and emotion blur together, turning the ocean into both a real place and an emotional state.
The voice work is more understated than showy, but that restraint fits the intimacy of the story. Sharpe gives AJ a quiet nervousness that makes his awkwardness feel sincere instead of exaggerated. You can hear the hesitation in him, especially in the early scenes where AJ seems unsure of how much of himself he is allowed to reveal. Hsu brings Kristen warmth and confidence, but she also gives her a stubbornness that keeps the character from becoming some idealized symbol of tragedy. Kristen is funny, romantic, scared, determined, and full of life, which is why her illness never becomes the only thing defining her.
That distinction matters because “In Waves” never treats Kristen as merely the source of AJ’s pain. Her illness changes the shape of the story, but it does not flatten her into a lesson for him to learn. She remains her own person, someone trying to hold onto the parts of herself that cancer threatens to take away. Nguyen gives Kristen’s journey dignity, even as the film is filtered through AJ’s memory and grief.
That is why AJ’s grief lands with such force. It is not just the grief of losing a first love. It is the grief of losing a future they were only beginning to imagine together. The film understands that what hurts most is not only the absence itself, but the unfinished conversations, the plans that never had time to become real, and the ordinary rituals that suddenly become impossible to revisit without pain.
By the end, “In Waves” earns its title not simply through surfing, but through the rhythm of grief itself. Loss does not move cleanly from pain to acceptance. It rises, recedes, and returns when least expected. Nguyen’s film understands that healing is not about leaving love behind. It is about learning how to carry it differently. In that sense, “In Waves” is not just a story about grief. It is a story about the memories that keep pulling us back, and the love that teaches us how to stay afloat.
9/10
IN WAVES photos courtesy of Netflix © Silex Films – France 3 Cinéma – Gao Shan Pictures – Charades productions – Panique! – 2026
