by Drew Martin
With Netflix setting up a Hollywood level studio system at the Jersey shore, I think it is fitting to revisit some well-done Jersey shore films. This weekend I watched Colby (2016) for the first time. It is an independent drama directed by Jake Fuller and Alex Markman, and starring Stephanie Brait who plays Colby, a troubled young drifter.
The movie starts with Colby leaving an apartment in New York City. We don't know how long she's been there and what the situation is. She's kind of being casually kicked out as we see her belongings tossed to her by someone off camera but it's not an active fight. She's always on the roam, trying to find a place to stay, which she initiates through pickups. When a guy she meets is taking her home, she is surprised he has a car and asks instead of taking her back to his place to drive her to the beach, which she says she has never been to. Like any beach, ever. He is not only game for it but takes it to another level by suggesting they break into a weekend beach house, which he claims to have done before.
To make a long story, short...he gets caught while she is at the beach. He goes to jail and has his car impounded, which would be totally fine with Colby as she just met the guy, but her bag is in the trunk and that means the world to her. So she works her way into the life of the owner of that house, and his family, befriends the daughter and spends a few days in a tenuous dance with everyone because the wife and daughter do not know about the initial involvement with the husband/father. In fact, the husband never makes the connection that Colby was part of the original break-in. Deception all around, it's an uncomfortable arrangement.
Colby is primarily filmed in Long Beach Island, New Jersey, and the beach is thematic. It's the end of the world, a division between before and after, a place of leisure but also of abandonment. Most importantly is the steady repetition of the waves, which Colby mimics, constantly returning to the scene of the crime, which she wants to call home, but is pulled away for one reason or another.
Colby definitely has one of the best movie endings I have ever seen. Ultimately, Colby returns to the household/family that she has disrupted. All we know of her own family is a mother who never picks up her calls. In the ultimate deception, Colby climbs into the bed of the daughter whose whereabouts we are unsure. The parents come in the daughter's room to apologize for all that has transpired. Colby covers herself with the bedding as the mother comes to console her, thinking it’s their daughter. It's a beautiful ending because it's what Colby really wants, an understanding family that will work through issues, and she just needs to hear at least once in her lifetime that everything is going to be ok. But of course it can't end nicely because in a matter of minutes or even seconds it will be known that Colby is back. We are spared of that reveal and its aftermath and simply soak in the moment with Colby.
