Menorca
Director: John Barnard
Year Released: 2016
Rating: 1.0
Mixed-up soccer mom Claire (Tammy Gillis) abandons her husband and son by stealing an SUV, has sex with a hitchhiker, meets a stripper (Sheila Campbell) and then becomes a stripper, all the while saving up cash to take her child's pet rock (look! it has a moustache!) back to the Spanish island of Menorca, where her and her family once went on holiday. The first couple of minutes had me thinking this was going to be some kind of jokey feminist reading of Camus, but it ends up just being as dumb as the rock - Claire's "personal journey" is a cry for help despite her outward defiance (the 'explanation' of her difficulties with her child doesn't make any sense), and her trip to the title location is just an excuse for the filmmaker to photograph an exotic location. Women-behaving-badly can be done with success, but it just needs a screenplay with a speck of insight into suburban ennui. I wonder: what would Clio Barnard have done with this very same topic?
