On paper, Holiday sounds like Coralie Fargeat’s 2017 thriller Revenge. A young gangster’s moll in Love Island-style garb is treated like an expendable sex toy, endures a horrible rape (that an acquaintance does nothing to stop), then lashes out. But where Revenge’s anti-heroine was cartoonish, Danish teen Sascha (Victoria Carmen Sonne) feels like a real girl.
On holiday in Turkey with her handsome, alpha-male boyfriend Michael (Lai Yde) and his servile crew, she’s shy, intrepid, wary, reckless; in other words, hard to pin down. Secretly, and almost absent-mindedly, she starts hanging out with polite Dutch sailor Thomas (Thijs Römer). Has Sascha found her guardian angel?
Swedish director Isabella Eklöf is in no hurry to tell the story. Like Ulrich Seidl in Import/Export she uses long takes to create a sense of unease. Like Paul Thomas Anderson in Boogie Nights she floods her screen with bright colours.
The dialogue, especially between Thomas and one of his chums, is perfect. Flipping between Dutch and English, these seemingly secure men with their ironic humour play their cards close to their chest, even with each other. They’re not idealised, but one horrible night when Michael visits Thomas’s boat they react like bullied schoolboys. It’s excruciating to watch. Some metaphors are a little obvious but still, by the end you feel you know this waif through and through.
Cert 18, 90 mins
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