Float (2023 film)

Float is a 2023 Canadian drama film, directed by Sherren Lee. The film stars Andrea Bang as Waverly, a young woman with a tense relationship with her parents who decides to spend the summer before starting university staying with her aunt in the coastal beach town of Holden, based on Tofino, where she is drawn into a romance with lifeguard Blake (Robbie Amell) when he gives her swimming lessons.

The film was written by Lee and Jesse LaVercombe, as an adaptation of a Wattpad story by writer Kate Marchant. The character of Waverly was not written as being of Asian ancestry in the original story, but Lee chose to write the film adaptation that way so that she could draw on some of her own cultural background.

The film premiered at the 2023 Vancouver International Film Festival, and screened in the Canadian Narrative Competition at the 2023 Calgary International Film Festival.

It went into commercial release on February 9, 2024.

Reception
Richard Crouse gave the film three stars and wrote, "It's fitting, that given the setting of the film, that Float is the equivalent of a summer beach read. Despite some clunky, earnest dialogue—'I want to stay here with you but I want to be a doctor,' sounds like a rejected line from a Hallmark movie—the movie does what it set out to do, put a new spin on a classic genre."