Sink or Swim

I really enjoyed watching Sink or Swim during last week's screening. I thought that it described a great story about a woman's relationship with her father during her life.

The voice over used by Friedrich was extremely powerful, especially as it moved from the girl's viewpoint to when she becomes a woman later on. It anchored the film into a narrative, even though the images on screen remained more disjointed, even complementary to the story at hand. I liked watching the graph of the "American Family" drawn, especially after the metaphor of how wives should be and the woman's father's dissatisfaction in married life. While nothing worked for him within these structures, the narrative would reveal that he still had strong feelings for his daughter.

The end tied up the film quite nicely. I like that it allowed the woman to finally let go of her father through the lake-water moccasin repeated symbol.