In 'The Smell of Apples,' the period detail is a daisy print you already know

Variety's review of The Smell of Apples keeps returning to surfaces: gawkily short seasonal school uniforms, patterned kitchen tiles, garden chairs like steel satellite dishes. Then the detail that does the most work — an orange-and-brown daisy print that anyone of a certain age will recognize from towels, mattresses and beach umbrellas. The critic's phrase for all of it is “present and correct to an eerie degree.” That is the quiet argument of period design at its best: it works less by accuracy than by recognition. A print you last saw on a beach towel is harder to argue with than a date on a title card.