CinemaSerf

Jul 2, 2025

6.0

This does come to quite an head in the last five minutes and there’s a solid performance from Fiona Shaw at times too, but otherwise I struggled to see much point in this rather shallow drama. “Rose” (Shaw) hasn’t been able to walk for almost twenty years so has mortgaged her house so she can attend a specialist clinic run by “Gomez” (Vincent Perez). She is accompanied by her daughter “Sophia” (Emma Mackey) who, whilst she obviously loves her mother, is clearly a bit fed up being her constant carer. I think that fairly swiftly we can deduce something of the nature of the older woman’s problems, but that isn’t really the crux of this story. That has more to do with “Sophia” and her relationship with “Ingrid” (Vicky Krieps) whose enigmatic personality and character entrance and infuriate her, even more so when her friend “Matty” (Yang Gael) shows up to muddy the already pretty confused waters. With this uninteresting scenario bubbling along lethargically and Shaw just complaining about the water the whole time, we are now largely left to furnish the story with our own interpretation of what we think is most likely going on and then, certainly in my case, ask just why I ought to care one way or the other. The raffia-mafia have had a hand in the characterisation of “Ingrid” and I’m afraid that even though it’s filmed on a lovely Greek beach I just couldn’t get into it. It’s had some decent effort put into the production, but it will look fine on a winter’s evening on the television. Not so much hot, more tepid.

Yet another reboot. This time the lesbians destroy an early 2000s male-gaze boob feature, turning it into a coming of age family drama. There are some nice boobs in here especially from the mother. Very few bras but...where's the gratuity? Shouldn't we have a scene in an ice cream parlour where some tits come out? Don't people go to school for this?

I'll preface this by saying that story lines don't necessarily mean all that much to me. But this movie does do quite a few things very well, and it's overall a pleasant watch. All of the visual aspects, pacing, acting. The way it portrays intimate relationships is refreshing, and imo all too rare. And the psychology of the familial relationships do ring true, to an extent. Knowing now that it was based on a novel makes sense. There was at least one scene that was a bit confusing, and I'm sure it was better explained or better left to the imagination. Rounded up from 75%.