Clattering unenthusiastically up a hotel stairwell, 17-year-old Mila (a superb Tamiris Zhangazinova) gives off an air of world-weariness. Some of it is earned — as we will quickly find out, this is hardly the first time her flighty mother Dalida (Assel Kaliyeva) has scooped up Mila and her younger sister Lina (Medina Sagindykova) and promised them some special together-time while she recovers from yet another romantic setback. But some of Mila’s attitude is feigned, a veneer of unruffled teenagery disdain that hides a wary child’s vulnerability beneath. As observed with cool-toned compassion in Zhannat Alshanova‘s exquisitely perceptive debut feature “Becoming,” sometimes those who look to be bobbing placidly on the surface may be struggling desperately to tread water below. 

Given that the few Central Asian films that make it into international (and especially western) circulation in any given year often emphasize a certain cultural otherness, it’s especially refreshing that “Becoming” alights instead on a much more widely relatable experience of youth. Dalida and her daughters are middle-class, urban and broad of horizon. Lina is used to amusing herself with video games. Mila is attached to her smartphone and well-versed in the satisfying passive aggression of glancing at the caller ID and declining the call.

Dalida, meanwhile, thinks little of flying abroad to meet up with the man she promised Mila she wouldn’t see again. Sure, she’ll be leaving the girls alone once more, but won’t she be in contact often, and hasn’t she left plenty of money for taxis and suchlike, and isn’t this amenity-laden hotel a full-board resort anyway? In her absence, Mila initially makes a half-hearted attempt to look after her younger sister, but soon gets distracted by the prospect of finding her own tribe. 

Swimming in the hotel pool one day, she bristles at the advice on her form and breathing given to her by a stranger. But when she sees him again a little later, coaching a team of five girls of around her age, she becomes intrigued. He is Vlad (Valentin Novopolskij), and the young women are the open-water swim team he is training up to participate in an important regional competition. To Mila, looking in from the outside, the little clique appears enviably tight-knit, and Vlad’s slightly enigmatic air of tough-love authority seems to offer the structure her own home life lacks.

And so with her signature mixture of brazenness and shyness, she petitions to join their training sessions, and is gratified when one of the girls, Madina (Enlik Kozyke) takes her casually under her wing. But then tragedy strikes at an illicit pool party, and the effects are twofold. First, when her mother cannot be contacted by the investigating authorities, it brings Mina back into the orbit of her estranged grandfather, a well-respected—or is that well-feared?—former government official. And second, it opens up a slot on the team, so that Mina is suddenly part of the internal struggle for position within its hierarchy, where her desire for peer acceptance quickly metastasizes into something darker and far less humble. This competitiveness between the girls is amplified by their burgeoning sexuality, which colors the way they vie for Vlad’s approval, and unleashes an instinct for self-interest in Mila that suggests she may not be as different from her mother as she likes to believe. 

There is the sense that “Becoming,” in its brisk, 93-minute form, is itself the product of fairly ruthless self-discipline on Alshanova’s part. The film bears the hallmarks of some post-script reworking: certain truncations and elisions imply that various moments are the vestigial remnants of more expansive and more thoroughly explored storylines. But rather than detracting from the film’s flow, that economy distinguishes the movie, bolstered by some elegant cutting from editor Lila Desiles. Alongside the rich but unshowy photography from Leos Carax’s regular DP Caroline Champetier, which hints at unseen depths beneath each image’s surface, “Becoming” becomes an excellent example of how mood and rhythm can contribute as much to a film’s momentum as plot.

It’s only the grandparental relationship that could have done with a little more fleshing-out, and then only a little. What there is—especially a dinner party scene of pin-sharp intergenerational awkwardness—goes a long way in providing some provocative context regarding post-Soviet Kazakhstan’s authoritarian politics. But Alshanova is not so preoccupied with allegorizing a new Kazakh generation struggling against the restrictions of inherited social structures. Instead, with its riveting central performance (Zhangazinova deserves to break out) and confidently impressionistic approach, “Becoming” is a stirring portrait of a solitary young woman longing to belong and to be free of belonging, while learning the harsh lesson that, swim all you like, some undercurrents are just too strong to escape.