12/31//2021 – R – 2h 1m – Netflix

Alan: ⭐⭐⭐⭐✩
Michelle: ⭐⭐⭐⭐✩

A middle aged college professor on a beach vacation in Greece recalls incidents from her past when her daughters were young upon seeing a young mother exhausted by taking care of her young daughter at the beach.

Michelle: It’s hard to review this movie without revealing too much and spoiling the journey. It’s a good movie. Good acting, good editing, good tension, interesting setting.

Alan: This movie has been nominated for an Oscar for best adapted screenplay. I did not understand why the characters behaved the way they did. But I stayed engaged throughout the movie trying to figure out what was happening. I suspect it is very literary with a lot of symbolism. I didn’t get it. That seems to be a pattern for me with certain Oscar nominated films.

Michelle: The story is probably easier to understand in a novel. The movie is very dense, and like you said, the characters’ actions are hard to understand. 

Even though the characters’ actions don’t seem to have immediately obvious motivations and the movie is full of bizarre literary symbolism (dolls, broken dolls, young mothers, bad mothers, infidelity, criminal family), the movie is not boring. There is tension from the mafia-style family, from Leda stealing the doll from the mafia family, and in the flashbacks to Leda’s past as a young mother. 

Alan: I kept trying to understand why she stole the doll. In the end, there wasn’t a reason. She just did it for no reason. Or maybe I just don’t understand this movie.

Michelle: Leda says she doesn’t know why she stole it. She says she was ‘just playing’.  When she plays with the doll, Leda takes care of the doll, cleaning it and squeezing out slime and insects from its mouth before she gives it back to Nina. Those scenes were tense and bizarre but interesting and kept me wondering what would happen next.

Alan: I think this movie is about regrets. Most of Leda’s memories seem to be things that she regrets doing. But I don’t know how the memories affect her. At one point she states that she is a very selfish person. It didn’t seem like a new revelation, but maybe it was. She didn’t seem to be estranged from her children. There wasn’t anything to repair there.

Michelle:  The timeline was mixed up in the movie. It seems that in the present, Leda isn’t estranged from her family. The vacation away from her usual life led her to reflect on her earlier choices that she is already redeemed from.

Alan: Is Leda hoping to help Nina avoid the same mistakes that she made? Is that her redemption?

Michelle:  Maybe. Or maybe she just recognizes the same human condition in Nina. Leda said she ‘doesn’t judge anyone’. And, after seeing the flashbacks, it’s understandable that she doesn’t judge.

Alan: I give the movie four stars. It was well done. The acting was good. It held my attention. But it held my attention because I was working like mad to understand why people were acting the way they were. I felt confused and unsatisfied afterwards. I’ve always thought I was an intellectual film snob, but maybe I’ve lost some of that as I’ve gotten older.

Michelle: I give it four stars. Good movie with actors in a lovely locale telling an interesting story.