Cannes critics have lost their minds over Charlotte Wells’ Aftersun, a laid-back, edge-of-boredom, fly-on-the-wall father-daughter vacation flick, set in Turkey sometime in the late ‘90s. I didn’t mind it and it’s not a painful endurance test, but it’s certainly lethargic as fuck.

Where’s the pulse? Where’s the intrigue or story tension or the proverbial second-act pivot or any of that stuff? Sorry, Jose.

11 year old Sophie (Frankie Corio) and her young-looking, divorced dad (Paul Mescal) are staying (bonding) at a midrange coastal hotel. Swimming pool, video games, camcorder footage, puppy love, golden sunlight, distant hazy forests, dad grinning like an idiot. etc.

A dozen or so little things “happen” (including a curious weeping scene and a mystifying moment when Sophie succumbs to the romantic advances of an overweight gamer) or are more precisely observed. but the whole time you’re thinking “Guy Lodge and Carlos Aguilar did backwards somersaults over this?“