Premise: A middle-aged woman goes on a working vacation in Greece where another large vacationing party cause her to reflect on choices from her past.
I feel bad that I didn’t love this movie more. It’s Maggie Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut and I love Maggie Gyllenhaal. It stars Olivia Coleman, Dakota Johnson, Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, and others who I all like a lot. It’s a “European vacation” story which has produced some nice indies in the last decade ranging from Call Me by Your Name to Before Midnight.
I appreciate what the film is doing. It’s about motherhood. Olivia Colman sees herself in the drama unfolding with Dakota Johnson and her daughter. There are few actors as engaging while watching other people as Olivia Colman. I’m impressed with Johnson’s performance too. She makes her life look luxurious and stressful. Jessie Buckley plays Colman in flashbacks and I was struck by how much she actually felt like a young Olivia Colman. And she really captures how burned-out motherhood can make someone. I see that same look in the eye of any parent with young children at an amusement park.
The movie successfully shows the uglier side of parenting. That thing where you’re too exhausted to fight it or play nice. This is one of those movies that left me irritated on purpose. I have a hard time rating those movies. Whenever I started getting relaxed with this story of Colman relaxing in a foreign land, some kind of irritant showed up, like Johnson’s large extended family, local youths ruining a movie screening, or Colman’s flashbacks to her daughters. That’s literally the point of the movie, so I think it’s a success. It’s just not the kind of movie irritation that I respond well too. And the sword of Damocles hanging over the movie – Colman stealing the young girl’s doll – is the kind of plot function that wears on me. I don’t like it in the way that I don’t like comedies centered around a misunderstanding. She makes it harder on herself seemingly to add tension to the plot and not for any reason that makes much sense.
I wanted to like this movie more. The performances are great. Gyllenhaal’s direction is very assured. I can see this movie having a lot of fans. It just wasn’t on my wavelength.
Verdict: Weakly Don’t Recommend
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