地獄の休暇から日本映画まで: 見るべき5本

When Jean Paul-Sartre wrote that hell is other people, he may have been thinking of his summer holidays. Candice-Marie (Alison Steadman) and Keith Pratt (Roger Sloman), the endlessly irritating couple from Mike Leigh’s Nuts in May, are living proof: a pair of water-colouring, banjo-playing, unpasteurised milk-seeking vegans, they might have built a substantial social media following today, but in 1976 they were simply eccentrics.

The film follows the couple as they arrive at a Dorset campsite for a few days of idyll, armed with Candice-Marie’s whimsical curiosity and Keith’s incessant need to instruct her. Alas, the campground is public, and a fellow traveller soon pitches up, cranking up the volume on his radio. 

Originally screened as part of BBC’s Play for Today series in 1976, Nuts in May has long been a cult favourite from Leigh’s filmography. Now the BFI is releasing it on Blu-ray for the first time, meaning fans will get to see Keith’s descent into a delightfully self-righteous meltdown in glorious high definition. And as the final stretch of summer hangs in front of us, perhaps now’s a good time to consider some of the other disastrous getaways given to us by cinema over the years. In the selection below, it’s seldom the destination but the company – families, lovers, friends, total strangers – that makes these holidays a living hell.

Rotting in the Sun (2023)

Things start out bad – suicidally bad – for Sebastián Silva in this meta-satire in which he stars as a version of himself: a gay Mexico City-based director heavily addicted to drugs. A holiday would do him good, suggests his awful friend and landlord. And so Sebastián heads to the beach, sojourning at a gay party hotspot where he still prefers to doomscroll on his phone while men laugh, flirt and fuck around him. There he meets Jordan Firstman, also playing a version of himself as an LA influencer who is relentlessly pushy about pitching Sebastián a TV project while also trying to hook up with him. These beach days unfold like a dizzying nightmare for the very high Sebastián, his eyeline – and, by extension, the screen – veritably haunted by dicks. A second, equally awful holiday plays out in the latter half of the film, this time following Firstman (essentially living on perpetual holiday) as he unravels the anxious thread of Sebastián’s disappearance in Mexico City.

Fat Girl (2001)

Some of the lesser evils endured by 12-year-old Anaïs on holiday with her family are the constant quips from her parents about her eating and the venomous judgment of her beautiful 15-year-old sister, Elena. But there’s much, much worse to come when Anaïs is forced to follow Elena around as she meets Fernando, an Italian university student who begins pursuing her romantically. The two sisters share a bedroom, leaving Anaïs with no choice but to see her sister invite Fernando inside on different nights; first, she sees the two flirt as if she were not there; then, she witnesses Fernando pressure and coerce Elena into sex as “proof of love”. Catherine Breillat’s camera, standing in for Anaïs’s point of view, is unflinching; the violence is inescapable.

L’Avventura (1960)

Monica Vitti stars as the melancholic Claudia in L’Avventura, the first of director Michelangelo Antonioni’s “alienation” trilogy, which follows her holiday across the Aeolian Islands with her best friend Anna, Anna’s boyfriend Sandro, and a handful of other wealthy Roman acquaintances. In the film’s black-and-white cinematography, the ocean appears oil-dark and the coastline terribly harsh, a distinctly un-Mediterranean backdrop for Anna’s sudden disappearance. Heartbroken, Claudia searches for her friend across the islands and down in Sicily, all the while pursued romantically by Sandro. As the rest of their upper-class friends lose interest, Claudia begins to fall for Sandro, battling a unique sense of guilt and isolation.

The Comfort of Strangers (1990)

Departing from Paul Schrader’s more severe outings as director, The Comfort of Strangers takes us to a misty, labyrinthine Venice, where beautiful British couple Colin and Mary are holidaying in an attempt to either rekindle or extinguish the embers of their relationship. Their itinerary is disrupted by the presence of Robert, an enigmatic gentleman played brilliantly by Christopher Walken, whose strange stories of a punishing father and vengeful sisters become an unsettling source of fascination for the couple. The dynamic is ultimately one of predator and prey, as Robert and his wife Caroline look to ensnare the Brits in their sadomasochistic games. 

Force Majeure (2014)

For the Swedish family – father, mother and two young children – at the heart of Ruben Östlund’s Force Majeure, their skiing trip to the French alps starts in picture-perfect fashion. But on the second day, as the family lunches at a chalet overlooking the mountains, a controlled avalanche begins to form in the distance. At first it’s a spectacle, but as the snow’s momentum builds, the diners begin to panic. Then it happens: Tomas, the father, runs away, leaving his wife and children behind. Seconds later, the dust lifts and everyone is standing there, unharmed. What follows is an examination of masculinity in crisis and family dynamics, as the quartet must spend the rest of the film confronting the knowledge that, in a moment of danger, Tomas would prioritise himself.

Nuts in May is out now on Blu-Ray via the BFI.

When Jean Paul-Sartre wrote that hell is other people, he may have been thinking of his summer holidays. Candice-Marie (Alison Steadman) and Keith Pratt (Roger Sloman), the endlessly irritating couple from Mike Leigh’s Nuts in May, are living proof: a pair of water-colouring, banjo-playing, unpasteurised milk-seeking vegans, they might have built a substantial social media following today, but in 1976 they were simply eccentrics.

The film follows the couple as they arrive at a Dorset campsite for a few days of idyll, armed with Candice-Marie’s whimsical curiosity and Keith’s incessant need to instruct her. Alas, the campground is public, and a fellow traveller soon pitches up, cranking up the volume on his radio. 

Originally screened as part of BBC’s Play for Today series in 1976, Nuts in May has long been a cult favourite from Leigh’s filmography. Now the BFI is releasing it on Blu-ray for the first time, meaning fans will get to see Keith’s descent into a delightfully self-righteous meltdown in glorious high definition. And as the final stretch of summer hangs in front of us, perhaps now’s a good time to consider some of the other disastrous getaways given to us by cinema over the years. In the selection below, it’s seldom the destination but the company – families, lovers, friends, total strangers – that makes these holidays a living hell.

Rotting in the Sun (2023)

Things start out bad – suicidally bad – for Sebastián Silva in this meta-satire in which he stars as a version of himself: a gay Mexico City-based director heavily addicted to drugs. A holiday would do him good, suggests his awful friend and landlord. And so Sebastián heads to the beach, sojourning at a gay party hotspot where he still prefers to doomscroll on his phone while men laugh, flirt and fuck around him. There he meets Jordan Firstman, also playing a version of himself as an LA influencer who is relentlessly pushy about pitching Sebastián a TV project while also trying to hook up with him. These beach days unfold like a dizzying nightmare for the very high Sebastián, his eyeline – and, by extension, the screen – veritably haunted by dicks. A second, equally awful holiday plays out in the latter half of the film, this time following Firstman (essentially living on perpetual holiday) as he unravels the anxious thread of Sebastián’s disappearance in Mexico City.

Fat Girl (2001)

Some of the lesser evils endured by 12-year-old Anaïs on holiday with her family are the constant quips from her parents about her eating and the venomous judgment of her beautiful 15-year-old sister, Elena. But there’s much, much worse to come when Anaïs is forced to follow Elena around as she meets Fernando, an Italian university student who begins pursuing her romantically. The two sisters share a bedroom, leaving Anaïs with no choice but to see her sister invite Fernando inside on different nights; first, she sees the two flirt as if she were not there; then, she witnesses Fernando pressure and coerce Elena into sex as “proof of love”. Catherine Breillat’s camera, standing in for Anaïs’s point of view, is unflinching; the violence is inescapable.

L’Avventura (1960)

Monica Vitti stars as the melancholic Claudia in L’Avventura, the first of director Michelangelo Antonioni’s “alienation” trilogy, which follows her holiday across the Aeolian Islands with her best friend Anna, Anna’s boyfriend Sandro, and a handful of other wealthy Roman acquaintances. In the film’s black-and-white cinematography, the ocean appears oil-dark and the coastline terribly harsh, a distinctly un-Mediterranean backdrop for Anna’s sudden disappearance. Heartbroken, Claudia searches for her friend across the islands and down in Sicily, all the while pursued romantically by Sandro. As the rest of their upper-class friends lose interest, Claudia begins to fall for Sandro, battling a unique sense of guilt and isolation.

The Comfort of Strangers (1990)

Departing from Paul Schrader’s more severe outings as director, The Comfort of Strangers takes us to a misty, labyrinthine Venice, where beautiful British couple Colin and Mary are holidaying in an attempt to either rekindle or extinguish the embers of their relationship. Their itinerary is disrupted by the presence of Robert, an enigmatic gentleman played brilliantly by Christopher Walken, whose strange stories of a punishing father and vengeful sisters become an unsettling source of fascination for the couple. The dynamic is ultimately one of predator and prey, as Robert and his wife Caroline look to ensnare the Brits in their sadomasochistic games. 

Force Majeure (2014)

For the Swedish family – father, mother and two young children – at the heart of Ruben Östlund’s Force Majeure, their skiing trip to the French alps starts in picture-perfect fashion. But on the second day, as the family lunches at a chalet overlooking the mountains, a controlled avalanche begins to form in the distance. At first it’s a spectacle, but as the snow’s momentum builds, the diners begin to panic. Then it happens: Tomas, the father, runs away, leaving his wife and children behind. Seconds later, the dust lifts and everyone is standing there, unharmed. What follows is an examination of masculinity in crisis and family dynamics, as the quartet must spend the rest of the film confronting the knowledge that, in a moment of danger, Tomas would prioritise himself.

Nuts in May is out now on Blu-Ray via the BFI.