An American couple, Paul and Marianne, spend their vacation in Italy and experience trouble when Marianne invites a former lover and his teenage daughter to visit, which leads to jealousy and dangerous sexual scenarios.
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CinemaSerf
7
By CinemaSerf
Can you imagine being on holiday with your hunky boyfriend only to discover half way through that your slightly dysfunctional ex has arrived with his teenage daughter! Personally, I'd be on the first plane home but rock star "Marianne" (Tilda Swinton) decides to stick it out with her film-making squeeze "Paul" (Matthias Schoenaerts) when "Harry" (Ralph Fiennes) shows up with "Penny" (Dakota Johnson). Initially, the toxicity seems to be under control but quickly we see things spiral into a fairly entertainingly internecine series of scenarios that drown us in a mix of nostalgia, resentment and a fair degree of lust too as the drink starts to flow and the truths start to emerge - be they actually true or not! It's Fiennes who delivers best here, I think, encapsulating the character of the flawed, almost delusional, "Harry" in a fashion that quite successfully gets under your finger nails. Schoenaerts gets naked enough times to justify his inclusion on the eye-candy chart and also provides quite a powerful steam-valve for the young "Penny" who appears to know exactly what she is after here... It's a bit on the long side, and like many of Luca Guadagnino's films does linger a little too much on the admittedly gorgeous Sicilian establishing photography and the pacing can come across as quite lazy at times, but when the poison is flowing effectively through the punchy dialogue, the film allows all four of these rather unlikeable characters to illustrate an holiday from hell that looks set to end in tragedy.
