Ok. I loved this. I don’t think it will be everyone’s cup of tea but from the first bolshie feminist dance number, I was hooked.

Sebastián Lelio has made some really interesting films – A Fantastic Woman, Disobediance, Gloria and its remake, Gloria Bell – all which seem to tackle what it is to be a woman. The Wave is loosely based on the real life feminist occupation of Chilean universities in May 2018.

Julia (Daniela Lopez) is a music student who is struggling in her singing class to control her breath and project her voice with confidence. Her mother runs a convenience store and Julia’s choice to study music seems to her a waste of opportunity to better their situation. When she meets friend Max (Lucas Sáez Collins) at a nightclub, their drunken night turns into an non-consensual sexual encounter that she struggles to tell anyone about.

What Lelio does with this quite serious topic is to turn it into the kind of spectacle that the media has made it. The song and dance numbers are so typical of the musical genre but the lyrics are about difficult topics like the difficulty of recognising when you’ve been abused, the borderline between friendship and abuse, and how we victim blame and make excuses for perpetrators.

What I particularly loved about it was that we were hearing all of the things that are said when a woman is abused. All of the excuses made, all of the accusations against victims, all of the ways that we try and excuse and explain and pretend that the problem is solved and solvable.

I think this resonates because, as soon as something is tagged as a #metoo film, there is a sense that this is something that happened in the recent past and has fixed all of the problems that women have in work and study. This film will be more likely to get people coming to see it who might otherwise avoid a more serious film about the same issues, like Black Box Diaries. This seems to be treading lightly and with humour but the messaging is no less serious. In many ways it is quite bleak in terms of the inability that women have to speak up and be believed and to not then be victimised themselves.

Daniela Lopez is excellent, as are many of the characters around her although I can’t remember any of their names. There is one scene toward the end where the fourth wall is broken and I’m in two minds about this. It feels a little self-indulgent by the director, but I understand How, like with 1001 Frames, it is making a comment about the complexity of critiquing film with film. Critiquing how women are treated but having a male director tell the story. I find myself forgiving Lelio though, as I think he is genuinely inclusive in his definitions of women and how he approaches stories about them.