Adrift, aka A Deriva, as a story about a 15 year old facing what must have seemed an impossible situation, if the story was real life. The problem is faced well, sort of. It is an optimistic story. It is okay as a message story but okay too if one ignores the message and watches only for entertainment.
The Cake Eaters (2007) has elements that resemble this story and it is also optimistic, even though the main theme unfurls alongside the story of a butcher and a cow. It does not seem to be a story that can be either a message or entertainment, but it is.
I find this to be an interesting story that is worth trying to comment on, just my first attempt was deleted after a complaint to the administrator after it had been up for nine months. It did try to be an honest and reasonable comment and I really had not thought that it included any offensive stuff. What I did was include comment about my own reality in the days around me first watching A Deriva. Adrift is a fictional story and my own reality can feel very fictional too. Not that other IMDb browsers will have a personal reality that feels fictional. I consider this attempt at a comment to be weak compared to the first version, it misses out personal aspects.
Many of the characters in Adrift are attractive, scantily clad, early teens girls. That can be read as relating to this story being set on the Brazil coast, a holiday resort town, for the kids this is their summer holidays. If one wants to look for meaning and symbolism in the dress code then there is a mountain of plus and minus waiting to be found, but the simplest view is that this is just 'summer holidays' in the southern tropics. It might even be a tropical equivalent to winter.
The adults, be they parents or young adults, have a role that blends well with the story of the early teens. If one prefers, some of that can easily be the central aspect, instead. One can look to this story for a wide range of sub-stories and all have a relevance. I found how the parents deal with their kids to be central, for me.
I find the dead dog to be difficult to interpret re symbolic meaning, for me it is just a dead dog.
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At September 2015 I have just re-watched it, straight after watching the ultra low budget 'Some Prefer Cake' of 1998, a story that loses more than most from the low budget constraints, particularly with the acting. That totally draws out the quality of this, this is so solid on so many different levels.
