Steps
2022 · 14m · USA
Directed by Blake Winston Rice
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
Years after their breakup, Kate returns unannounced to her ex Cooper's backyard pool to finally cash in on his old promise — that he'd teach her to swim. What unfolds is a tender, halting reckoning with the feelings neither of them quite let go of.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
It's a breakup film that refuses the usual emotional crescendo—just two people in chlorinated water, circling vulnerability without ever quite naming it. The constraint of the pool becomes almost boring on paper, which is precisely why Rice's refusal to explode it into melodrama actually lands.
The staging echoes a long lineage of water-as-threshold in cinema, but Rice resists the symbolic heaviness; the swimming lesson functions as genuine dramatic structure rather than metaphor, positioning the film in conversation with intimate realist traditions without genuflecting to them.
The entire emotional architecture hinges on Rice's decision to keep the camera at water level—we're literally in the pool with them, weightless and vulnerable, which transforms a simple promise-kept into something that breathes and floats on its own terms.
Reviews
Special Grand Jury Award winner — a critically acclaimed drama.
Festivals
- DeadCenter Film Festival 2022, Special Grand Jury Award
- Sidewalk Film Festival 2022
- Sarasota Film Festival 2022
- Chelsea Film Festival 2022
- Carrboro Film Festival 2022
- Deep Focus Film Festival 2022
- Flickers' Rhode Island International Film Festival 2022
- Big Apple Film Festival 2022
- Sugar Loaf Film Festival 2022