The big heat: what ‘sunburn cinema’ tells us about the Great British holiday

A s we near the end of a hot, dry August, I’m longing for a Mediterranean getaway; salt-crisp skin, a Fanta lemon, and a tinge of pink across my shoulders. I’m also thinking about what I like to call “sunburn cinema” – homegrown films like recent release Hot Milk (adapted from Deborah Levy ’s novel), which remind us we’re a nation uniquely ill-equipped to deal with the sun. Or, as one popular Letterboxd review puts it: “Oh no, the Brits are on trauma vacation again”.

Sunburn is the hallmark of a particular kind of Brit abroad, visual evidence of the lack of decorum that we notoriously display across the resorts and beach towns of Europe. Sunburn cinema, however, pinpoints what makes us inclined to chaos and self-sabotage.

Hot Milk , for example, sees mother and daughter Rose (Fiona