7 Beats Per Minute: Doc About Freediving Champ Plunges Viewers into Deep Thought

By Kim Hughes

Rating: B

An uncommonly intimate documentary about an extraordinary woman, 7 Beats Per Minute follows champion Chinese-born, Hawaii-based freediver Jessea Lu.

Despite having a scientific background (a PhD in clinical pharmacology), Lu is a creative thinker pursuing self-knowledge and spiritual exaltation through freediving the way Buddhist monks pursue those things through meditation. This unstated but perceptible parallel is one of 7 Beats’ most resonant themes.

And in director Yuqi Kang’s quietly beautiful film, Lu mostly finds what she is looking for, though not without experiencing acute physical and emotional challenges. Kang, who discovered Lu while learning to freedive herself, followed her subject for five years with seemingly unrestricted access as they became close friends.

As the film opens, we see Lu gliding effortlessly underwater. A voiceover in Mandarin explains the title, how at great depths, the swimmer’s heartrate drops, connecting the dots between our experience in the womb and later in the water. Lu, who suffered significant emotional damage at the hands of her reproachful mother, tells us she is “reborn in the water.”

Lu’s story is otherwise atypical. In 2010, while visiting Hawaii, she encountered spearfishing friends who introduced her to freediving, sparking an enthusiasm for the sport that, like so many, is male dominated.

Freediving, of course, requires divers to plunge to great depths with only the oxygen in their lungs, holding their breath for an unimaginably long time. Though dangerous, 7 Beats Per Minute shows that it’s also uniquely exhilarating, requiring as much control over mind as body.

As with meditation, freediving demands total focus, rewarding adherents with great personal insights and a heightened understanding of the contours of one’s ability. The film follows Lu as she undergoes rigorous fitness regimens and breath-holding exercises, racking up gold medals in various competitions along the way.

Her goal is Vertical Blue, the Super Bowl of freediving held in a uniquely well-suited geographical spot in the Bahamas. In 2018, Lu hoped to set a world record, diving 93 meters. Instead, she nearly died. In the aftermath of that, all bets are off as Lu rethinks and recalibrates.

There’s something captivating about watching people moving underwater even when danger lurks, and director of photography Kalina Bertin captures it all sublimely. We follow Lu to Antarctica, where she dives in part to confront the menace of cold that haunted her as a child. She also comes face-to-face with other mammalian and aquatic beings there and elsewhere; all are delightful to behold.

Trickier to negotiate perhaps is the relationship between subject and filmmaker. It’s not always clear if the camaraderie — and tension — between them is a bonus or hindrance to the storytelling, especially in a film that is ostensibly a documentary. Still, 7 Beats Per Minute is often mesmerizing. And Lu… well, she really is extraordinary.

7 Beats Per Minute. Directed by Yuqi Kang. With Jessea Lu. At Toronto’s Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema starting February 14 to 16 (with a 2:45 pm relaxed screening). More cities announced soon.