Tired of wandering from gig to gig, a 40-something, alcoholic resort worker hunts down an old flame at the dilapidated water park where he now works, but her attempts at winning him back go disastrously, tragically awry. 

SYNOPSIS:

MAYA THORN is a 42-year-old holiday resort worker and former party girl who's been wandering

from job to job, all over the world, for the last 20 years, looking for the one place and group of

people that will finally make her happy. The trouble is she's an alcoholic and her addiction affects

all her jobs and relationships. She never stays in one place long enough to get fired, and blunders

on, thinking everyone else is to blame for her unhappiness and problems.

Set over the course of a few months one summer in the late 1990s, the story starts in Maya's most

recent job in Spain, a family-friendly hotel resort. Here, she has pissed off and alienated all her

friends and colleagues, and particularly her boss. Again laying the blame on everyone else, her

thoughts turn to the last person who, she thinks, truly made her happy and understood her. SAM

OWEN is a 40-something fellow gigging resort and seasonal worker that Maya has worked with on

and off over the years. He's sexy, scruffy and charming and they used to be great friends until

Maya's unreliability and self-centredness finally drove them apart. He was the one guy that never

slept with her, although they often came close. She now decides that her happiness lies solely with

finally winning him over.

First of all, she has to find him. Oblivious to the harm she's caused all these people in the past

through her alcoholism and self-centredness, Maya approaches first Sam's parents and then a

series of former colleagues but they all refuse to tell her where he is or how to get hold of him.

She's left with no choice, as she sees it, but to return to the UK, where he is most likely to be.

The second problem she has to overcome is finding the money to get her back to the UK. Her job

pays very little and her lifestyle hasn't left her with any savings. Her attempts at getting extra work

or a promotion meet with failure, as do her attempts at 'friendly' prostitution and trying to sell

drugs to holidaymakers' kids.

Finally kicked out of her job for the latter, Maya is forced to pot-wash, busk, walk and hitch-hike

her way back to the UK, penny by penny, mile by mile. Once there, she discovers, by spying and

stake-outs, that Sam is now the owner of a failing, run-down water park in a tired seaside town.

She's found him! But, as a former addict himself and victim of her one-sided friendship, he wants

nothing to do with her. Plus, he has a girlfriend. Not to be deterred, Maya takes a job at a local pub

and settles in for a war of attrition against Sam's heart and reason. This involves hijacking Sam's AA

group, breaking and entering the water park, sabotage, and the hobbling of Sam's lifeguard

girlfriend.

Having inveigled her way into the water park and Sam's life, Maya inadvertently sets about

destroying both and squandering the precious chance she's finally got at living her perfect life. She

“charms” money out of her boss at the pub to give to Sam to keep the water park afloat, commits

a string of health and safety violations, steals, and lies to cover her tracks. It all catches up with her

– and everyone around her – when the park is closed down, the pub landlord is left penniless, and

she finds herself hated by all and utterly alone.

Maya then has to draw on her own, limited, resources to try to sort this whole mess out. She has

learned that happiness is an inside job; it doesn't matter where she goes, she's always going to

have to take herself and all her flaws along with her. As Maya puts it, all she can do is just try not to

be a dick to whoever is in front of her at the time.

She finally admits and faces up to all the damage she's caused and sets about trying to make

amends to Sam, by tackling the closure, and to the pub landlord by working for him for free and

slowly paying him back his life savings.

The final scene sees her standing up for one last time at one of Sam's AA meetings, confessing all

her downfalls, apologizing and finally admitting her addiction. We don't learn how Sam and the

landlord respond to her; the focus is solely on Maya, humbled but evolved, determined to patch

her own life and the lives she's damaged back together.

THE LAST RESORT