SXSW 2025 Review: SATISFACTION, Sunny Skies Belie a Gathering Storm

Greek islands. Beautiful weather. It's perfect! So why is Lola so troubled?

Satisfaction
The film enjoys its world premiere at SXSW 2025.

From its first moments, writer/director Alex Burunova's feature debut suggests that something is brewing beneath the surface of its sunny exterior.

The temptation in such a gorgeous location is to ignore, if not suppress entirely, any nagging doubts. In such a lovely, sun-dappled setting -- captured exquisitely by director of photography Mate Herbai -- Lola (Emma Laird) and Philip (Fionn Whitehead) fit right in. They are creative people who are visiting the Greek islands to enjoy each other's company, enjoy the relaxed environment, and finish up a project.

The sun and the sex soon give way to memories of how the couple found each other, first as friends in London. Lola's relationship with her girlfriend at the time ran aground, and she turned to her trusted friend Philip for comfort, and their relationship ensued.

One day in Greece, when her guard is down, Lola meets the entrancing Elena (Zar Amir), and the two quickly become friendly. One thing leads to another, and soon Lola invites Elena to dinner, all while Philip observes, wondering about Lola's quite obvious attraction to Elena, yet reluctant to say anything about it.

Burunova's script deliberately lays out its narrative structure in an alluring manner that makes it easy to fall prey to its surface attractions. In that sense, it resembles a pleasure ship that is cruising just fine through summer waters until an iceberg suddenly appears.

Emma Laird's performance as Lola is extraordinary. Like the film as a whole, her outward appearance is that of a calm, quiet, and lovely person. Yet an early scene shows her yelling into the void, a solitary figure of unknown despair -- and then the next moment, all seems to be fine. So we know that something is up; we just don't know what, exactly, is troubling her, and why she can't, or won't, talk to Philip about it.

Satisfaction captures the elusive sense of general unease that can persist in our lives for reasons that we refuse to acknowledge. Perhaps "refuse" is too strong a word; maybe it's more like we don't want to deal with something that happened in the past because it's just too painful to bear, like ripping off a bandage that covers your heart.

Delicately handled, Satisfaction unfolds its pain gently yet firmly. Sometimes you gotta let it rip.