Ivan Radford | On 25, Jan 2024

Director: Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin
Cast: Annette Bening, Jodie Foster, Rhys Ifans
Certificate: 15
UK digital release date: 3 November 2023

After a festival run including the London Film Festival last year, it’s only at the start of 2024, as the Oscar nominations were announced, that a lot of people first became aware of Nyad. The sporting biopic tells the true story of Diana Nyad, a swimmer who in 2013 took on the challenge of journeying from Cuba to Florida. If the 101-mile swim wasn’t impressive enough, she was 64 at the time. The fact that she’s being played by Annette Bening, the 65-year-old four-time Oscar nominee who hasn’t yet taken home an Academy Award, feels very fitting.

Annette Bening is wonderfully fierce as the focused swimming champ. When we first meet her, she’s just getting back in the water – literally – and her thirst to achieve her long-held dream of that marathon swim is reignited. You can see the sparks light up, and Bening’s brilliant gift for communicating so much with just her facial expressions is in its element here; she does half her acting with only her head popping out of the water. She delivers a remarkably committed physical performance that makes it clear just how much effort it takes to push through the waves of shark and jellyfish, while eating food from a pouch and pooing as she goes. Then Bening gets on to dry land, and the drama really kicks off.

For the record to stand, we soon learn, nobody must touch Diana, and so the film grows into a study of loneliness and connection. Bening is at once amusing and heartbreaking in capturing Nyad’s prickliness, keeping everyone at distance both in and out of the water. That she nonetheless insists her team keeps forging ahead, through failed attempt after failed attempt, gives her a crazy edge that verges on nervous breakdown, and Bening sinks her teeth into that narrow field of vision with a cold, near-fatal ruthlessness.

Like Nyad, though, none of Bening’s work would have impact in isolation, and Julia Cox’s script takes care not to do a disservice to the ensemble cast. Rhys Ifans is charmingly stubborn as the sea-faring stalwart responsible for charting their course through the impossible currents. Jodie Foster, meanwhile, is beautifully understated and open as Bonnie, Diana’s coach and best friend. Their bond is one of love that feels lived-in and sincere without requiring words to communicate that. Their best moments see Bonnie call out Diana’s self-centred behaviour, a supporting actor nominee demanding to get due credit and respect – so the fact that Foster is also nominated for an Oscar is entirely apt.

The whole thing is choreographed with striking visuals by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin. They combine on-screen stats and news footage with the kind of confidence you’d expect from the documentary makers behind Free Solo and The Rescue. This, their relatively conventional narrative feature debut, never quite hits the tense heights of either. The use of flashbacks to delve into childhood abuse are perhaps what muddy the water, as you wind up wanting to hear more about that and understand more clearly how Diana grew from young swimming prodigy to the woman she is now. Or perhaps it’s that we never really doubt that Diana’s going to do it, so certain is she as she gives rallying speeches about sexism and destiny. The result is closer to The Walk than Man on Wire, but Nyad remains a stirring ode to one woman’s passion, resilience and perseverance – and a deserving showcase for an actor who’s still got many laps left in her.

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