Michael, a Danish gangster, takes his girlfriend, Sascha, and his extended criminal family on a luxury vacation in a fancy villa in gorgeous Bodrum, Turkey. Shopping, waterparks, barbecuing, and hardcore partying fill their days and nights. Having little regard for anything or anybody outside their world, they exist in a bubble of excess that is governed by Michael’s rules—and if the code is broken, they all know that violence will follow. But when Sascha befriends a Dutchman with romantic designs on her, she toys with Michael’s authority and creates a situation that cannot end well. In a breakthrough performance, Victoria Carmen Sonne fully commits as Sascha, the complex young moll that eludes assumptions and expectations. First-time writer/director Isabella Eklöf has a dynamic visual touch and a flair for dark comedy and creates a destabilizing discord as she elaborately fills the frame with colorful, seductive images while telling a disturbing, graphic tale of brutality and power. Holiday provokes, challenges—and even implicates—the viewer in its unsettling reflection of our times.
