Annette Bening and Jodie Foster breathe life into Diana Nyad’s quest to swim from Cuba to Florida — even when this biopic is merely treading water.
around Manhattan in a little under eight hours in 1975, she became a celebrity and a talk-show staple. At the age of 30, Nyad retired after breaking the open-ocean record by going from the Bahamas to Florida, one stroke at a time, in 27 hours. She transitioned into sportscasting, wrote books, hosted radio shows, did the occasional motivational speaker gig, and enjoyed the rewards of a life well lived.
Still, one thing consistently nagged at Nyad. In 1978, the face of competitive marathon swimming attempted to make the treacherous 60-hour, 103-mile journey from Cuba to Key West. It did not go well. Everything from strong winds to the threat of sharks played against her favor, and she was forced to abandon what she believed would be her crowning achievement. Decades passed. Then, shortly after her 60th birthday, Nyad revisited the idea of trying to do it again. Yes, she was older.
And for documentarians Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, this movie gives them a chance to splash around in the pool of narrative filmmaking while also adhering to what we’d call, for lack of a better word, their “brand.
Better are the scenes in which Bening and Foster affectionately go toe-to-toe with each other , or one or both of them bicker with the swim’s navigator John Bartlett, played by Rhys Ifans as if he’s auditioning for a lead in an adaptation of. There are real human interactions happening when these three share the screen and they’re not strategizing, fretting about weather patterns or flailing about after jellyfish attacks.
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