For someone gay whose favorite movie is probably the original Point Break, I can’t believe I had never seen 2002’s Blue Crush.
The two films have so much in common. A surfer teaches a quarterback how to surf. They fall in love. Their differences cause friction. One of them has a homoerotic situation with another surfer. In Point Break, it’s the male quarterback (Keanu Reeves) having an intense relationship with male surf god Patrick Swayze. In Blue Crush, it’s our female protagonist surfer having that same kind of relationship with a fellow female surfer.
I’m also a sucker for movies where women are really talented at sports. The single-minded love of surfing is what binds our main character Anne Marie’s (Kate Bosworth) found family: her younger sister Penny (Mika Boorem) and her besties Lena (Native Hawaiian and surfer Sanoe Lake) and Eden (queer actress Michelle Rodriguez). They all live together on the island of Oahu in Hawai’i in a cool surf house. They have a casual, quirky beachy vibe about them, and it’s obvious they love each other fiercely. Anne Marie wakes up every morning and calls in to find out the waves of the day. When it’s “perfect pipe,” she encourages the girls to pile into the car and surf it. The way she asks Eden if she wants to come with is “Wanna get wet?” We are not even 30 minutes into the movie and it’s already gay.
In a 2022 interview with Vulture, Bosworth said the film could have easily been exploitative. The women spend most of the movie in bikini tops, mixed sometimes with bikini bottoms, sometimes with long shorts. Director John Stockwell, a straight man who I found out is the uncle of Florence Welch so maybe that counts for something, chose to focus on the women’s humanity. He wanted to tell an authentic surf story that “just happened to be through the eyes of women,” Bosworth said. The script stuck out to her because that was rare for an early ‘00s film starring young women. Stockwell and producer Brian Grazer are surfers themselves. Co-writer Lizzy Weiss went to school for Sociology and Women’s Studies. My guess is these aspects contributed to the screenplay’s feminist vibes.
Eden is a former competitor of Anne Marie’s and the only one of her friends who really pushes her to compete in the Pipeline Masters. Anne Marie was a successful up-and-coming surfer until she hit her head and almost drowned. Soon after, her mom left her so she had to raise Penny alone, and Anne Marie struggles to balance keeping track of Penny’s incomplete homework and Penny’s weed smoking while living her own life outside of parenting.
Throughout the movie, Anne Marie — traumatized by her near death experience and by her mother — is paralyzingly afraid of dropping into a big wave. She biffs it every time.
Now she’s been invited to one of the biggest competitions where it’s likely if she gets a high enough score , she could win a sponsorship with Billabong. Eden reminds her that she used to be cocky.. She just needs to access her confidence again. In a hilarious scene meant to show us Anne Marie’s dormant fearlessness, she takes a used condom she found while working as a hotel maid out to the beach and shames the man who left it on the floor of his room. She is then fired. Eden and Lena quit. The women need money fast.
An NFL QB named Matt (Matthew Davis) who is in Hawai’i both on vacation and for the Pro Bowl, offers them a healthy sum of money to teach him and his friends how to surf. The montage of the crew learning is one of the most fun in the film. Tiny Penny takes on a huge linebacker in a speedo (and the man who left the condom) Leslie (comedian Faizon Love). Their relationship is super silly. (“You’re wearing nut huggers!” Penny laughs. Leslie replies they are “nut containers.”)
Anne Marie and Matt start dating and she loses focus on gearing up for the Masters. Eden is pissed.
It’s clear watching this film in the light of 2025 that Eden is in love with Anne Marie. The third point of their best friend triangle Lena, is happy for Anne Marie and Matt. She doesn’t seem bothered by any of it. Her relationships with both other women are purely platonic. She has a close bond but not the intense feelings that Anne Marie and Eden clearly have for each other. I don’t want to objectify and make a movie about women loving each other gay just to make it gay. Women can be intimate and emotionally close and be friends. Women can be on the masculine side (societally) and still be women. Lena is a great example of that. She helps raise Penny (who is in high school) as a third mom, and she loves Anne Marie and Eden. Even though she is just as fierce, independent, and athletic as the other two (and has short hair), she is not part of whatever queerness is happening in the house.
There’s a heartbreaking scene where Eden rents a jet ski so she and Anne Marie can practice for the contest. Anne Marie blows her off because her QB BF gets into a fistfight with some locals, including her jealous ex. The locals are protective of their secret spots being infiltrated by visitors and though they’re painted as extreme, I’m actually on their side regarding Native Hawaiians and their land.
The resulting, but already building, tension between Eden and Anne Marie breaks out into a massive fight during a practice where Anne Marie again wipes out. Their jet ski overturns and Anne Marie immediately blames Eden for pushing her too hard. “Stop being such a Barbie,” Eden says. Anne Marie is super offended. Eden continues, “I don’t know what you want from me.”
“I want you to get your own life and stop living through me,” Anne Marie bites back. It’s the kind of why are you so obsessed with me, you lesbian jab that a lot of queer women are familiar with. Some straight girl back in the day lobbed it at you, like Cady does to Janis in Mean Girls. Utterly devastating.
“So that’s it?” Eden calls after her. She feels she’s being replaced by Matt. She shouts after a retreating Anne Marie, “You’re gonna run off and be a pro hoe” to her NFL BF. The implication is, You’re going to drop all of us, drop me, to be with a man.
“At least I have someone interested in me,” Anne Marie replies. Notice she says “someone” and not “a boy.” Eden goes right for the jugular, comparing Anne Marie to her absent mom who ditched their family for a man. She says Anne Marie is going to prove all the surf guys right; she can’t surf because she doesn’t have balls.
It’s a break up. Anne Marie wants to run away when the going gets tough. Eden says the other woman is just scared. (I’ve had this gay break up before when neither of us were out. I was Anne Marie.) She swims off, leaving Eden crushed.
That night, Anne Marie goes to a nice party with Matt. She straightens her usually curly hair and wears a low-cut dress he bought for her. She’s changed who she is. Eden is literally sitting at home watching old surf videos of Anne Marie and admiring her good form. “The boys were spinning. Remember that?,” she reminisces. The surf contest had to make up a rule, specifically for Anne Marie, that girls couldn’t compete in the boy’s contest. That’s how talented she is. Eden warns Anne Marie that Matt is using her.
In the bathroom at the party, Anne Marie overhears the other WAGs putting her down for being unsophisticated. She is different. She doesn’t fit in. (Queer.) They say Matt always likes to slum it with local women in different cities.
Anne Marie is understandably upset to be just another stupid girl on his roster, and she confronts Matt about it. They jump into the water to fight, paralleling her fight with Eden. The two reconcile, but Anne Marie is now determined to compete in the Masters. Matt’s on the back burner.
At the Masters, the queer metaphor couldn’t become clearer. Anne Marie almost flops the competition until she is in the same heat as lesbian surf legend Keana Kennelly (a real life famous champ).
Earlier in the film, we’d seen Keana at a gas station clocking Anne Marie (as possible competition only, of course). Keana is an out lesbian, and boy does she look like it. She could have stepped right off the set of The L Word giving Kate Moenning a run for her money. After Keala finishes her run, she swims over to Anne Marie and encourages her to overcome her fear and get up on a wave. She doesn’t have to do that. Anne Marie is against her. But Keala is a girl’s girl in more ways than one. She points out the best wave of the day and gives it to Anne Marie, who nails it.
Anne Marie gets perfect 10s across the board. It’s not enough to advance to the next round past seasoned surfer and seasoned lesbian Keala, but Anne Marie gets the attention of Billabong. She is asked to join their women’s team. She’s on her way back to success.
In the end, Anne Marie and Matt kiss.
In the 2022 Vulture interview, the reporter asks Bosworth about the chemistry between her and co-star Matt Davis. She redirects the question to be about female friendship.
“If I’m honest, I feel like the love story of the movie is really the friendship. In hindsight, I realized how important and honest the love between us was,” she replies. “That pulse in the movie, I think, is what moved so many young women. It was the inspiration to go out there and fulfill your dreams, but it was also a real love story of friendship that I think is equally as important and has resonated so deeply.”
Matt will return to the Continent. The women’s love, for each other and for the waves, is forever.
Previously, on Trans Guy Watches: Cadet Kelly and She’s the Man.
