HOLIDAY: An Intriguing Tale Of Misogyny & Brutality

Holiday, the feature directorial debut from Isabella Eklöf (who co-wrote last year’s marvelously underrated Border), opens with what is quite possibly the most memorable opening credits sequence since Rosie Perez shadowboxed her way into Hollywood history over the credits of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing. Alone inside a black room, the film’s lead actress, scantily clad in white, contorts her body in a writhing dance to the throbbing beats of electronic music. The credits are stamped almost aggressively across these images in fluorescent pink font, a color choice that conveys both femininity and fierceness.

Yet while one might think it hard for a film to live up to such a bold beginning, Holiday ends up being an even more challenging film than one might expect.

Welcome to Paradise

Sascha (the suitably enigmatic Victoria Carmen Sonne) is the young and beautiful girlfriend of Michael (Lai Yde), a small-time drug lord with a hot streak of brutality that mars his charming surface. Michael has brought his entire crew, including Sascha, for a family vacation of sorts at a villa in Bodrum, a beautiful town on the Turkish Riviera. When she’s not fulfilling her role as Michael’s arm candy, Sascha basks in the sun-drenched luxury of the town and befriends two Dutch tourists, Thomas (Thijs Römer) and Frederik (Michiel de Jong).

In Thomas, a young man who left behind a career in sales to sail the seven seas on his yacht, Sascha finds a free spirit with whom she can escape when her life with Michael becomes too oppressive. Together, they spend evenings experimenting with drugs and lounging on the beach, despite Sascha being all too aware of how dangerous Michael is when he thinks someone may be stealing from him.

How much of Michael’s abusive behavior is Sascha willing to tolerate for a life of leisure? More importantly: if she chooses to tolerate it, is she truly a victim? Or is Sascha a woman with far more agency than she cares to let on to the men around her? The answers to these questions remain unclear until the film, which meanders along at a pace just slow enough to build tension without becoming boring, reaches a shocking climax that will leave you questioning everything you had assumed about Sascha and her motivations.

From Light Into Darkness

The character of Sascha bears more than a passing resemblance to Jen, the heroine of Coralie Fargeat’s blood-drenched thriller Revenge, a film that filtered the rape-revenge movie through a female gaze with phenomenal results. Indeed, both Revenge and Holiday force us to examine our own assumptions about those women who society chooses to write off as pretty, empty vessels instead of allowing them to be complicated human beings.

Like Jen, Sascha serves as the trophy girlfriend to a man older and more powerful than her and must deal with his controlling behavior if she wants to keep taking advantage of her lover’s wealth and prestige. Both women use their sexuality to keep their men beholden to them, only for that to backfire as they are treated like objects to be used and abused rather than as equals.

Yet where Revenge tells its heroine’s story via a hyper-stylized symphony of violence, Holiday presents Sascha’s story in a blunt, realistic way that doesn’t allow the audience the luxury of maintaining a safe cinematic distance from the unpleasant events taking place onscreen. This uncomfortably matter-of-fact style of storytelling reaches its peak about halfway through the film when Sascha is subjected to the most disturbing sexual assault I have ever seen captured on camera. It is horrifyingly explicit and presented in one wide shot with no cuts, giving the audience no opportunity to look away from what is happening.

Personally, I think this scene went too far. (In contrast, for the rape scene that marks the turning point of Revenge, Fargeat cuts away, fully aware that one doesn’t need to see the actual act to understand the gravity of what has just happened.) While I understand why this scene is important to the story, I’m not sure why it needed to be shot this way apart from pure shock value. I find that disappointing, especially since the rest of the film provides such an intriguing critique of the inherent misogyny present in how society judges women, while also highlighting the lengths to which people will go and the things they will put up with for the sake of having money.

On the surface, Thomas is clearly the better man than Michael, yet both men demean Sascha in different ways. Michael treats Sascha like an object that he can use as he pleases, while Thomas treats Sascha like a stupid and helpless victim, someone who needs to be told that her life with Michael is a mistake and she shouldn’t be treated that way.

By judging Sascha this way, isn’t Thomas is just as much of a misogynist as Michael? And yet, by making these choices in the first place, isn’t Sascha just as amoral as Michael? Well, if there is one thing that Holiday makes clear, it is that nothing is so simple. Thanks to Eklöf’s mostly nimble direction and Sonne’s subtly complex performance, the film succeeds in getting under your skin and forcing you to think on these complicated questions. It might be tough to watch in certain moments, but it is worth watching nonetheless.

Holiday: Conclusion

While I firmly believe that the film’s depiction of assault was a step too far, there’s no denying that the rest of Holiday is remarkable. It will linger with you long after the credits roll, forcing you to acknowledge the ways in which you are complicit with the behavior of its characters. Eklöf has announced herself as a promising young filmmaker to watch in a way that cannot and should not be ignored.

What do you think? Does Holiday sound too disturbing for your tastes, or intriguing enough for you to give it a shot? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Holiday is released in the U.S. on February 22, 2019. You can find more international release dates here.