24 SEPTEMBER
With her bucket hat, tinted shades and baggily asexual attire, 17-year-old AJ (Nell Barlow) is a picture of teenage disaffection in Marley Morrison’s appealing debut feature, a product of the same Film London-backed Microwave scheme that gave us Shifty and Ill Manors. Dragged along with single mum Tina (Jo Hartley) and the rest of her brood to a drab resort in Dorset, this sullen misfit could scarcely feel more out of place in a dead-end destination where the weather is as grotty as the caravans, and the nightly cabaret belongs to a different century.
Until, that is, she claps eyes on lifeguard Isla (Ella-Rae Smith), at which point this unasked-for sabbatical becomes an intoxicating oasis of romantic possibilities. We’ve stayed in these chalets before to be honest, most recently in last year’s equally lo-fi Make Up. Yet there’s a warmly inviting glow to proceedings that keeps us fully invested in AJ’s awkward rite of passage, much of it coming from a supporting cast of hangers-on who win
us over with their benevolent tolerance of her adolescent stroppiness.
Loki’s Sophia Di Martino is a hoot as preggers sister Lucy while Samuel Anderson exudes cuddly machismo as her put-upon partner Steve. Yet it is Hartley who proves most affecting as Barlow’s fretting mother, a troubled soul who manages to find a touch of romance herself during this sweetly enjoyable excuse for a stay-cay getaway. Neil Smith