FILM-FORWARD.COMReviews of Recent Independent, Foreign, & Documentary Films in Theaters and DVD/Home Video
Directed by: Pawel Pawlikowski. Produced by: Tanya Seghatchian & Christopher Collins. Written by: Pawel Pawlikowski & Michael Wynne, based on the novel by Helen Cross. Director of Photography: Ryszard Lenczewski. Edited by: David Charap. Music by: Alison Goldfrapp & Will Gregory. Released by: Focus. Country of Origin: UK. 87 min. Rated: R. With: Natalie Press, Emily Blunt & Paddy Considine.
Suspended from school for being a "bad influence on people," freckle-faced, strawberry blond Mona (Natalie Press)
meets her match while riding on her motorless moped through the sunburnt Yorkshire countryside. There she
encounters the fearless and posh Tamsin (EmilyBlunt), on horseback no less, who's on leave from boarding school.
Opposites immediately attract. Both on their own, Mona takes Tamsin up on her offer and lets herself into Tamsin's
manor the next day, where Tamsin awaits her. Soon,
Mona practically lives with her new best friend (Tamsin's family is missing in action), evading the home she shares
with her ex-con, born-again brother Phil (Paddy Considine in a powder keg performance). Besides tying to convert
his sister, Phil has emptied all their bottles of alcohol down the drain and turned the family pub into a spiritual
center. Mona misses her former brother and joins the judgmental Tamsin in mocking his conversion, both behind his
back (Tamsin: "God's dead. This is what's real, the here and now") and to his face. But like Phil, Mona has own her
rapture, wholeheartedly idolizing Tamsin, drawing her girlfriend's portrait on her bedroom wall.
My Summer of Love isn't at all timid in its subject matter. It's almost unimaginable that an American
filmmaker would take head-on the inflammatory issues of teenage homosexuality and Christian evangelicalism
without resorting to comedy (Saved!) as director Pawel Pawlikowski does. The film also doesn't hold back in
depicting the arrogance and cruelty of these two teenagers (woe to anyone who is a victim of their pranks). What
begins as a boozy and desultory love affair winds down to a powerful and suspenseful finish, and the cinéma
vérité cinematography belies what is a well-plotted and crafted script, loosely based on a novel by
Helen Cross. And if actress Natalie Press reminds one of Sissy Spacek, both in her looks and in her intense
performance, it's no accident. Both Press and Blunt impressively make their film debut. Overall, Summer is
much less a coming-out story or social satire than an astute take on role playing. Perhaps what is more subversive is
the suggestion that even being in love is a performance. Kent Turner
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