Nell Barlow is the long-suffering gay teenager who falls for a lifeguard on holiday in Marley Morrison’s likably wistful debut
The holiday romance coming-of-ager is the genre that’s given writer-director Marley Morrison her likable feature debut. And if you thought Ammonite was going to be this year’s only gay love story set in Dorset, think again. AJ (Nell Barlow) is a smart, intense, socially difficult and lonely teen who wears a bucket hat and aviator shades, and whose overbearing mum Tina (Jo Hartley) still insists on calling her by her childhood name of “April”, unfortunately abbreviated to “Ape”. In a fiercely misjudged attempt to get AJ to cheer up and buck up, she insists on taking her on an old-fashioned family getaway to a holiday park in Dorset, along with her younger sister Dayna (Tabitha Byron), pregnant older sister Lucy (Sophia di Martino) and Lucy’s easygoing partner Steve (Samuel Anderson).
Grumpy, defiant and unconvinced by her mum’s self-congratulatory and ostentatious rejection of homophobia, AJ retreats behind her headphones and her book – but then she sees the charismatic and glamorous lifeguard Isla (Ella-Rae Smith) by the pool, who seems to be really attracted to her. But Isla also, worryingly, seems to have no shortage of attractive but stupid guys hanging around her.