This subtly understated film is the directorial debut of Charlotte Wells and is so good that it instantly marks her as someone to take note of. The premise of a father and daughter visiting Turkey sounded great to me but I became less enthused as it became clear that they mostly just spend their time inside the resort. Yet we watch them engaging in a variety of mundane holiday activities, the full depth of the film emerges only slowly as the most important moments are actually the ones that are implied but never directly shown.

Sophie, an 11-year-old girl from Scotland is on holiday in Turkey with her father Calum. She records their experiences on a video camera and the film intermittently switches to her footage. From their conversation, we gather than Calum is separated from Sophie’s mother and he lives in London. They encounter some minor inconveniences as there is construction nearby and the hotel fails to give them a room with two single beds but Calum does his best to make Sophie comfortable. They mostly spend their time relaxing at the pool or eating in the hotel’s restaurant. At times, Sophie socializes with the other British tourists at the resort, including playing videogames with a boy her age, and watching a group of older teens experiment with romance and sex. Calum however resists engaging with anyone other than Sophie and during his own free time engages in Tai Chi to relax himself. Though Sophie is only partially aware of it, he seems to be struggling with depression and has financial difficulties. Interspersed throughout the film are shots of Calum lost in the middle of a rave, which appears to symbolize his internal state of mind.

Viewed as a travelogue, this is downright awful as I simply cannot understand tourists who go on holiday in a foreign country only to spend all of their time in a hotel that mostly caters to their own nationality. The rooms they stay in look generic and even when they do go outside, they don’t seem to care much for the scenery. But then this was never supposed to be a happy film and the longer it goes on, the more you realize the awfulness of Calum’s mental state. There’s a constant tension in this film that underlies the boring mundanity of their holiday activities. We keep waiting for some horrific tragedy to happen, a pivotal moment that will suddenly alter the trajectory of the story we see before us. The genius of the director is that there is no such moment. In fact, the entire time what we’re really watching is a train wreck in slow motion. The young Sophie doesn’t realize it at the time and actually does enjoy her holiday. It is only many years after the fact that the adult Sophie must reexamine her memories of the time they spent together to notice the clues in her father’s behavior and words.

The film leaves room for some ambiguity and it is a bit of spoiler, but there’s no getting around the fact that it’s really about depression and suicide. Calum may not be the best father but you can see how hard he is trying and how much he really does love Sophie. Even without any explicit exposition, there is so much we can infer: that he feels too young and too unprepared to be a father, that he’s struggling with getting his own life in order, that he’s having trouble even being an adult maybe. It’s instructive to be able to see it play out from Sophie’s perspective. She’s sensitive enough to understand that her father might not have much money but is still too young to empathize with what’s going on inside his head. By insisting that he go up on stage for karaoke or corralling others to cheer him for his birthday, she might even be unknowingly worsening his pain and embarrassment. The acting by both leads is amazing but it’s clever how the viewer naturally assumes that the film is going to be mostly about Sophie but really it’s about Calum.

Whenever we hear news of a suicide, there will always be reactions of shock and surprise. This film nicely encapsulates that feeling of thinking you know someone but then realizing that you might not have known him or her that well after all and being regretful that you might have done something earlier. It’s a masterful treatment of a delicate and topical subject and is incredible work for a first-time director. Of course, I’m still leery that this is what counts as a good holiday in a foreign country by Brits but I won’t let that get in the way of my appreciation for this film.