Writer and Director Isabella Eklöf (“Let the Right One In” (2008) and “Border” (2018)) makes an equally jarring and impressive debut at the Norwegian International Film Festival with the dark and hypnotic thriller, “Holiday.”
Holiday is a riveting film that questions systematic power, agency, loneliness, capitalism, consumerism, and the devastating effects it has on Sascha, a beautiful young woman trying her best exist in a culture she did not create but must abide by.
So how can I describe Holiday? Well much like life…it seems predictable… until it’s not. And what unfolds changes both the protagonist and the viewer in the most unexpected way. There is simply no other way to describe this film.
On the surface, Holiday is the classic story of a crime family on vacation told through the eyes of Sascha, the head mobster’s (Michael) requisite eye-candy girlfriend. Sascha’s youth and beauty grant her access to a lifestyle that many cannot imagine and even fewer will ever experience. Throughout the beginning of the movie we voyeuristically gaze at Sascha as she’s wrapped in a cradle of wealth and privilege via expensive cars, luxury vacation homes, clothes, and jewelry, surrounded and protected by Michael’s henchmen. It’s pool, shopping, dinner, clubs, rinse and repeat. All under the glaringly bright sun of the luxurious Turkish Riviera.
In fact, for the first 50 minutes of the film, you are content to watch as Eklöf’s expert eye languidly document a beautiful woman revel in all the trappings of wealth and privilege afforded by her wealthy older boyfriend. But the truly insidious nature of the unnatural power imbalance within Sasha and Michael’s relationship is brought to light in the most gripping, disturbing, and powerful way imaginable via one of the most brutal and real rape scenes I’ve ever seen on film. What makes it so brutal, oddly enough, is the purely objective way that Eklöf’s chooses to film the scene. The scene is devoid of the prerequisite close-up of the victims’ face (contorted in fear and humiliation) as the “unthinkable” happens. The wide angle of the scene allows one to fully grasp the horror of rape. That is often done by those we know, those we allowed to have access to us for various reasons. There is no lust or misplaced affection. It is apparent that the only “desire” therapist has is dominate; to strip one of their agency in the most degrading and brutal way possible.
But Eklöf’s wide angles also allow us room to think and reflect on why rape is so prevalent in our culture. In fact, Holiday is a microcosm of the rape culture in many ways. For instance, there is someone who accidentally witnesses Sascha’s rape and chooses to simply turn around and walk out of the room. This person is never revealed to us. All we know is that they choose not to get involved and pretend like it did not happen.
Moreover, post-rape we find Sascha at a dinner party surrounded by her boyfriend’s crime-family. The camera falls on Sascha and you instantly notice the way her bruises are clumsily covered in makeup. Ignored by all. Never questioned. Is it because the men and woman who surround her with their smiling faces do not want to know? Are they too busy delighting in being positioned so close to power via Michael? Or perhaps they are paying their own price with their own regrets, and, in their eyes, Sascha’s pain pales by comparison? Or perhaps they are jealous that Sonya’s youth and beauty has quickly catapulted her to a proximity to power, besides Michael, that they could never attain on their own.
Eklöf’s also never lets us forget that Sascha is not your “average” female protagonist. If anything she may be a savvy victim if that makes any sense. Sascha realizes the structures set in place quickly and uses her intelligence (expertly depicted in her watchful and deceptively submissive gaze) to leverage what power her beauty affords her and secure what she desperately desires. This is where the director’s female gaze comes into play. In some circles, Sascha would be dismissed as a “gold-digger” (sans the heart of gold) for trading her agency for material possessions in a transactional relationship.
However, Holiday challenges its viewers not to dismiss Sascha’s story with such mentally lazy stereotypes. Because even wrapped in the shiny beauty that a life of leisure affords her, Sascha’s loneliness is palpable. And more than the material, it is life with Michael’s pseudo-family of henchmen, lackeys, and their respective girlfriends and wives that she pathologically craves. And in a jarring and riveting twist, Sascha sacrifices everything, even her personal autonomy, and mental boundaries to secure this feeling of togetherness and be accepted by “the group”. This decision changes the trajectory of Holiday and makes the film a must watch from beginning to end.
Holiday is directed by Isabella Eklöf, co-written by Johanne Algren and Isabella Eklöf and stars Victoria Carmen Sonne (Sascha), Lai Yde (Michael), and Thijs Römer (Thomas).
