Short of the Week
Aquadettes

Aquadettes

Growing old doesn’t mean growing sedentary. Meet the young-at-heart ladies of the Leisure World synchronized swim team.

The latest in the amazing project California is a Place, from photographers turned filmmakers Drea Cooper and Zackary Canepari. The project already gave us the splendid Silicon Valley fight-club hit short Uppercut, and continuing in the vein of previous pieces, Aquadettes profiles unique, interesting people who happen to be citizens of the Golden State. In this film we travel south to Leisure World, where their lens finds a lovely group of ladies who, in retirement, find fitness and friendship through synchronized swimming.

The film is emotional without being maudlin, as the ladies are upfront about the reality of aging, but enthusiastic about what they do. Watching this is a splendid use of ten minutes, and I highly recommend you do so.

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Sondhi approaches films from the perspective of an uber-fan, knowledgeable film academic, and occasional filmmaker. His tendency to over-think his film criticisms is due to a background in Philosophy, but he is putting useless intellectualizing aside for this site.
  • http://www.andrewsallen.com Andrew S Allen

    Just saw this for the first time thanks to Yahoo’s Sundance screenings. This is really good—a beautiful perspective on the aging Californian dream.

  • http://twitter.com/joshrandall Josh Randall

    Watched this hoping for inspiration on how to shoot synchronised swimming for an upcoming job – but this is a film about control and accepting losing it… which makes synchronised swimming the perfect visual illustration of choosing to try hard while being at peace