I watched this on the train to Glasgow on 10 June 2024. I loved it! It achieves that razor-thin and gorgeous balance between being genuinely funny, spirited, and chaotic, and also bruisingly tender and searching. It’s about a group of three British girls who go on a party holiday to a Greek island after their GCSEs, their anxieties about their futures, and a sexual assault one of them experiences.
Its presentation of lad culture on the holiday on a Greek island is deftly and sharply written - the pressuring, the machismo, and the excuses offered by the mates, while also incorporating character development and interesting arcs.
It was also refreshing to see London culture depicted on screen from someone who clearly knows what they’re talking about - the slang, the affectations and affections, and especially (and awfully) the GCSE/exam anxiety experienced on holiday.
There was a particular moment, near the end of the film in the taxi back to the airport, where I felt that feeling I haven’t felt in a long, long time, of the crushing realisation that the holiday from reality is over, and when you get back you’ll have all the same problems to deal with. In the movie, this was about her suspending her worries about her future after she fails some of her GCSEs, and focusing on the holiday events, but in the taxi you could see (or project) those worries settle back on her like malevolent crows. I haven’t felt that in ages and ages, and I’ve never seen it so lovingly and empathetically shown on a screen.
Plus, the movie was a whole lot of fun, the party scenes were spectacularly done, not over-the-top and unrealistic at all, but genuine and all the better for it.
Overall, amazing.