The hard-

cut opening is brilliant: fast-forward old vacation video, a young woman making her way on a strobe-stressed dance floor, the same woman reflected in the television screen as she watches said video.


It says it all, without being too obvious, about Sophie's search for the bluesy father who hid behind the dancing and tender thief.

The holiday video comes from Sophie's trip to Turkey with dad Calum some time around 20 years ago.

They go diving, go on a day trip to a mud bath, play pool, she meets a guy and everything seems on the surface to be great.

They have a well-oiled relationship with a lot of humor, a lot of irony, which does not allow for deeper contact, which becomes a problem when Calum occasionally suffers from bad temper and drinks a few too many beers.


But it is not about alcoholism, abuse or assault.

"Just" about the demon of depression, which can leave such deep traces.

Scottish

filmmaker Charlotte Wells' feature film debut - based on her own experiences - is unusually muted and delicate, portraying the blue emotions in an uplifting sensitive way.

The small shifts in mood, the sad look of a person entangled in his mental thicket.


Eleven-year-old Sophie puts her father's psychological puzzle together as best she can.

Her 20-year-older self (whom we only meet on a few occasions) does so with somewhat greater success.


Rising star Paul Mescal ("Normal People") and young Frankie Corio play the duo with such presence that even the quietest moments - of which there are quite a few - are filled with life.

It's beautiful

and dreamy… yep, that "dreaminess" that's sometimes irritatingly pretentious, sometimes entirely compatible with one's meager excuse for soul taps into the life nerve and sits there quivering to the bitter end.


Which is also redemptive.


After all, you have sat here for about a hundred minutes in nervous anticipation of that trauma that shaped the adult Sophie's existence, and then you realize that it has been going on the whole time, right before your eyes.

Piece by piece, hand in hand, towards doom.