In reply to Phil1919:
SPOILERS
I absolutely loved this. I went along with no expectations, my girlfriend who is a bit of a review hound had bought us tickets.
Firstly, I'm saddened that this was passed up for any cinematography gongs for one thing as it was near perfect in this respect.
I take Blue Straggler's point that it was a bit confused, maybe too much so relative to its weighty themes, but with double themes of death and growing up homosexual in the 80s I saw not clear intent in delivery and took it to be equally an exercise in magical realism. I'm a sucker for that and thought it succeeded in that respect.
The moment that crystallised that for me when when the boyfriend sees the protagonist's mother in the window during their night visit, which made me think that the parents were not necessarily alive, dead, figments of the imagination or dreams but some other state entirely, which is sort of supported by the parents' characters themselves in that they seem equally confused by the situation. Perhaps what we find out about the boyfriend at the end gives lies to that.
Personally I liked that the reigns on the real world were slackened just enough to suspect belief in this movie - I was definitely reminded of some Borges stuff in this respect.
Great performances all round I thought and as an aside, I wonder how much of the budget went on the four of them, post Fleabag, Aftersun, The Crown etc. For a presumably fairly low budget film, a fair chunk I'd imagine.