‘The Wave’ Review: Sebastián Lelio’s Feminist Musical Struggles to Find Its Rhythm (Netflix)

The challenge was already daunting. How does one make a musical about a feminist movement like the one that took place in Chile in 2018? How do you build it, narrate it, turn it into cinema? Sebastián Lelio took on that challenge—and it was almost impossible to win a battle that seemed lost from the start. The cause is just, the idea noble, but the task itself is thankless, complicated, and, judging from what’s on screen, nearly unrealizable.

Well-intentioned, honest, and sincere, the film offers an overview of the feminist movement that grew out of #MeToo and the wave of sexual abuse and rape allegations at Chilean universities. The dialogue tends to be expository, part self-explanation and part assembly speech. The lyrics—introduced gradually before taking over the second half—work in a similar way: they feel pedagogical, almost like musicalized typing exercises, with more passion than wit and more slogans than grace. It’s an almost impossible balancing act, and at times, even uncomfortable to watch.

With visual flair and ingenuity, Lelio tries to give the material a new shape in the second half, when the university occupation intensifies, the choreography dominates the storytelling, and one can at least appreciate the filmmaker’s effort to turn this theoretical-practical class into something cinematic. There are a few visually appealing numbers and glimpses of Santiago reimagined, but the songs never fully flow. The lyrics are heavy-handed, the vocals uneven, and the melodies somewhat flat. One ends up watching the construction more than the emotion.

The plot gradually focuses on the personal experience of Julia (Daniela López), a low-income scholarship student in a music program at a private arts university (there are no public ones in Chile), who becomes a movement leader while dealing with a troubling encounter with a classmate—one she’s unsure whether to define as abuse. That experience soon becomes the film’s central axis, turning into a kind of public trial about what constitutes abuse, what consent really means, and other key issues tied to the feminist debates of recent years.

The tone aims to be both commercial and somewhat experimental (even operatic), but that coexistence proves tough and uneasy. The Wave faces challenges similar to Emilia Pérez—its narrative feels stiff, the link between theme and form doesn’t quite connect, and the songs’ blunt literalness overwhelms everything. At least, unlike Emilia Pérez, this one gets the local flavor right: no one speaks Spanish with a fake “Chilean” accent à la Gustavo Fring in Breaking Bad. In that regard, it’s impeccable.

One almost senses the director of A Fantastic Woman trying to work his way through the problem—even breaking the fourth wall for a moment of self-critique, a kind of meta-confession for making a film that risks falling into the same mansplaining it condemns. But even if that doesn’t quite save it (and yes, this review might be guilty of the same thing), at least Lelio acknowledges the project’s inherent limitations. The truth is, not every just cause needs to become cinema—let alone a fiction film. Sometimes it’s enough for it to simply exist as what it is.