At first glance, Gitti and Chris look like an ill-matched pair but they seem to understand one another. And while their Sardinian vacation offers more than one reason for splitting up, director Maren Ade makes it clear why these two young people are still together. The movie brings off with equal aplomb moments of social awkwardness, mutual openness, and the kind of incommunicable understanding that can only occur between people who are truly close. The protagonists betray a degree of adolescent spitefulness, but they truly yearn to belong to one another. After meeting a more charming couple, who are by all appearances happier and more successful, their insecurity grows, and their general frustration with life begins to pervade a relationship whose purpose was to bring them joy. Tragicomedy here is not a generic choice, but a reflection of the state of that relationship, which the film captures with exceptional sensitivity while not flinching from laying its characters bare.