Although Satisfaction isn’t always an easy film to watch, it remains steeped in uncomfortable beauty even at its darkest moments.
In writer-director Alex Burunova‘s feature debut, Emma Laird and Fionn Whitehead star as couple Lola and Philip, two British composers struggling to get through a block in both their creative and romantic lives while vacationing on the Greek Isles. Meanwhile, memories of the beginning of their relationship and the introduction of beautiful tourist Elena (Zar Amir Ebrahimi) snaps Lola out of her haze.
Laird gives a stunning performance as Lola, a once-thriving musician who can’t make music anymore, blocked by an unspoken trauma. The actress alternates seamlessly between two timelines; one as a young queer artist high on life and obsessed with the idea of “synthesizing love” so she can take it every day, another as an emotionally exhausted woman struggling to connect with her partner, and more importantly, with herself.
Burunova’s cinematic opera utilizes the intimacy of sound (and lack thereof) to depict the tension of love, desire and trauma between this trio.
Growing frustrated in her creative block, Lola screams from the rooftop in one scene, completely silenced by the waves. When she confides her deepest, darkest truth during the film’s third act, Lola’s expression of pain is one again drowned out by the sounds of the ocean. As she struggles to find her voice as a musician, so does she as a woman grappling with an unspoken reality, presenting a profound comparison to the tragedy of Medusa in their Greek locale.
The importance of sound and reclaiming one’s voice in a toxic relationship takes more of a literal shape when the vacationing pair overhears a neighboring couple violently fighting in the villa below them. As a bystander tells them, the cops won’t intervene unless she screams for help.
“Why won’t she scream for help?” asks Philip. Later, after realizing her own traumatic truth, Lola throws a rock at the strangers’ window during another fight, as if to symbolize their own internal conflicts urging to break free.
Set against the stunning ancient beauty of the Greek Isles, Satisfaction offers a uniquely female and sapphic take on the same queer raw emotion and ancient European beauty that won over Call Me by Your Name audiences.
With brilliantly understated supporting performances from Whitehead and Ebrahimi in this emotionally fraught onscreen love triangle, Laird shines as Lola, a woman struggling to connect. Burunova’s beautifully composed portrait of grief, trauma and love captures that human conflict with the appropriate balance of poise and rage.
Title: Satisfaction
Festival: SXSW (Narrative Spotlight)
Sales Agent: UTA
Premiere date: March 7, 2025
Director-screenwriter: Alex Burunova
Cast: Emma Laird, Fionn Whitehead, Zar Amir, Adwoa Aboah
Running time: 1 hr 36 min
