The soundtrack mixes original music with songs from the 1960s, including tracks from Canned Heat, Richie Havens, and The Incredible String Band.

In 1972, disenchanted about the dreary conventions of English life, 25-year-old Julia (Winslet) heads for Morocco with her daughters, six-year-old Lucy and eight-year-old Bea.

Living in a low-rent Marrakech hotel, the trio survive on the sale of hand-sewn dolls and money from the girls' father, a London poet who also has a child from another woman.

In Entertainment Weekly, Lisa Schwartzbaum argued that Winslet "perfectly projects that naive self-centeredness with which a Woodstock generation of young wanderers, seeking spiritual revelation, made their way to cultures as exotic as their thumbs could take them".

In Variety, critic Lisa Nesselson also praised the "radiant" and "sturdy" Winslet for her performance, and argued that the film was "filtered through a sober and intelligent artistic eye".