as a society, a lot of us have been socially conditioned to victim blame - especially when the situation involves violence against women. it's wrong and we should call it out whenever we see it happening but wow isabella eklöf makes it really hard not to victim blame the hell out of holiday's apathetic sascha for most of the brutal violence committed against her. as the trophy girlfriend of a danish drug running mobster michael, sascha is continually presented as vapid, vain and complacent. time and again we see the men around her slap, verbally abuse, sexually assault and belittle her. sascha passively accepts it all, makes no moves to escape/improve her situation and shows active participation in the maintenance of her current status. you could make the argument that we don't know what kind of circumstances led sascha to her current position and that all kinds of manipulation could be going on behind the scenes but that's just it - you are never shown! eklöf makes the pointed decision to give you zero contextual background for sascha, forcing you to try and make sense of her character based solely on the actions that we are shown. and there is a strong argument to be made that sascha really is just a very stupid, materialistic and ultimately masochistic type of person. in an early scene, sascha makes the decision to use a (not insignificant) portion of the drug money she has just smuggled through customs for michael to pay for a shopping spree. this is our first indication that she probably doesn't think in her own best interests. she then spends a good portion of the film wantonly pursuing a dutch tourist romantically. she isn't sly about this and goes about it quite openly. being aware of michael's violent and possessive nature, as viewers we can assume she's doing this mostly to provoke some kind of reaction. as glenn kenny of the new york times put it, "it's hard to tell whether eklöf intends to communicate something genuine about the human condition, or just shovel hostility at her audience" as sascha is far from the sole distastefully inscrutable character we meet. eklöf takes time to communicate that the audience isn't invited to view any of the characters in terms of traditional notions of respectability. this is probably best illustrated by the scene of the crime family assembled at the beach, rudely disrupting every other holidaymaker with their obnoxiously thumping techno music and repugnant responses to being asked to turn the music down. elsewhere, even thomas, sascha's external love interest, is introduced as a somewhat slimy wannabe pick-up artist at a local ice cream shop. ok, so everyone is trash, where do we go from here? i've never bought into the idea that you have to like a story's protagonists for it to be worthwhile but this film tested me big time. sascha's final meeting with thomas is infuriating! i get it girl, fuck that guy for making assumptions about your life and choices but equally, did you just thump him over the head for being correct in those assumptions? i guess we'll never know because eklöf didn't give us any context for what's going on in your head! ultimately, i am glad i watched this film as it's certainly thought provoking and i'll probably watch future films from eklöf. however, i cannot give it a good rating for all of the storytelling problems mentioned above and the fact that at the end of day it forced me into being a victim blamer. i also really can't condone that fucking brutal rape scene. we did not need to see it and the actors certainly didn't need to endure it. p.s. that final scene where we see michael's goons leaving thomas' yacht with sacks presumably filled with chunks of his dismembered body in broad daylight... really? really?!