Film review: 7 Beats Per Minute plunges viewers into otherwordly ocean depths

Stunning cinematography and a compelling story make documentary about freediver Jessea Lu a breathless watch

By Janet Smith

7 Beats Per Minute screens at the VIFF Centre from March 14 to 22

YUQI KANG’S DOCUMENTARY 7 Beats Per Minute follows a freediver, and finds fascinating, poetic ways to immerse viewers in the depths of the ocean.

The big question is: What compels a human to push their lungs to hold breath for eight or ten long minutes as they press into the dark? The mesmerizing cinematography captures the magic appeal, plunging the viewer into the great blue beyond, often shooting competitive freediver Jessea Lu from below, silhouetted against the surface with her long flippers rippling. Helped by a soundtrack full of muffled underwater burbling, the effect is otherworldly. 

On land, Kang prods her articulate subject to express what draws her to the sport, and as she builds a close relationship, she slowly uncovers the equally deep-dwelling trauma that drives Lu to extreme self-discipline and escape. The fact that Lu is a high-achieving pharmacological PhD who immigrated to the U.S. from China with no money and without knowing a soul only adds to the portrait’s complexity.

Filmed over five years, this NFB doc centres around Lu’s training to conquer the elite freediving competition Vertical Blue that will take her down a gaping hole in the Bahamas sea. We learn the intricacies of freediving—how Lu gulps small bits of air before submerging, and how she enters an almost trancelike state, her heartbeat lowering to the film’s titular near-death limbo. 

Kang circles back to that surreal site of the competition—a tiny dock off a rocky shore—again and again, the camera shooting the location from high above, then breaking through the surface to descend from its azure shallows to the black void below.

To conquer the hole, Lu not only has to follow a vertical rope down 93 metres to beat the world record, but has to then find the energy, and remaining oxygen, to climb it all the way up again. The hole is also the site of an almost impossibly intense eight minutes, where we learn how quickly, and terrifyingly, freediving can go wrong. 

The rest of the revelations are best left to the film, which gives a visceral lesson in the fact that no matter how far you go, you can’t hide from yourself. Don’t be surprised to find yourself holding your breath as you watch it.   

Jessea Lu in 7 Beats Per Minute.

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