With boundless success at the BFI awards and a triumph at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, director Charlotte Wells knows exactly what she is doing as she presents us with a troubling tale of pain and struggle to stop us in our tracks. As the film begins, camcorder clips from the 90s and nostalgic sun-bleached images flick onto the screen, transporting us back to memories of infinite ice-creams and endless mocktails in the sun.
However, this nostalgia shared by both the audience and now adult Sophie (Celia Rowlson Hall), who plays back the videotapes 20 years later, is soon tainted as deeper problems begin to surface. Both the tapes and Sophie’s memories provide distressing insights into the internal battle of Sophie’s single dad, Calum (Mescal), with references to mental illness, alcoholism and suicide darkening the grainy colour palette of their memories on video. Calum is not the only one who deals with internal struggles, as Sophie encounters the typical hardships of adolescence.
On the holiday, 11 year-old Sophie surrounds herself with older teens, yearning to be more grown-up, as those around her are busy having casual holiday flings and drinking through the night. A more fittingly aged Michael (Brooklyn Toulson) soon comes into view amongst all the madness, with their relationship blossoming into a cutesy childhood crush, producing wistful sighs from the audience and allowing us to momentarily forget about any distress seen previously.
The beautiful father-daughter relationship between Calum and Sophie portrays the hardships that are not always conquered, with loneliness and grief studding the familiar scenes of the Turkish all-inclusive. With Calum telling Sophie “Live wherever you want and be whoever you want”, their relationship is both heart-warming and ambiguous as we are hit with scenes of both the tender and icy kind. Calum’s quiet desperation is reminiscent of Mescal’s role as Connell in Normal People, with the character’s anguish clearly too much to suppress by the end of the film.
Every aspect of this film is perfectly fashioned
We can see older Sophie trying to put the pieces together as she watches the tapes back, clearly searching for answers about what her dad was going through, with the audience uncertain whether he is still alive. Flickers of the father she knew fill the screen as she is unable to identify the other side of the man who was quietly drowning in front of her. Painful scenes of isolation and discomfort are perfectly paired with the likes of Queen and Bowie’s Under Pressure. Similarly, Sophie’s moving rendition of R.E.M’s Losing My Religion makes the whole thing a real tear-jerker. Every aspect of this film is perfectly fashioned, with faultless costumes flawlessly reflecting the characters and their surroundings. As the holiday comes to an end and reality calls, Calum re-enters a world of strobe lighting and loud music; a clear metaphorical mental state that he can't avoid, leaving Sophie with an image of a man she once knew.
Holiday of a lifetime- 10/10