My Summer Of Love
They say never judge a book by its cover, and one would assume the same should be said about films and their coverlets. I picked this film out of the library’s (rather small) collection for no other reason than the poetic title and its serenely bright cover baring two young women lounging amongst the grass. The bikini-clad girls do not appear to be from Britain, not when you consider the usual downpours and cloudy skies we are so used to. But despite the bare blue skies and their baking skin, this film is set in Yorkshire, England and as the title suggests, spans a summer of an unsaid recent year.
Though only 86 minutes long, and its edits through linear time, quick, the film is slow: languidly tracing upon the lives of two girls. They chance upon one another on a hot summer’s day: Mona, a working class orphaned teenager taking a break from riding her broken motorcycle around the moors and Tamsin, a higher-than middle class fantasist expelled from her boarding school and home for the summer passing the time riding her white and well-groomed horse through the countryside.
They embark upon what can only be called a devastatingly romantic exploration of one another, the hopelessly sensual transition from friend to lover occurring quickly with plenty of help from wine, cigarettes, mushrooms and long, often unheard discussions of the pain found in both of their lives. Mona despairs at her brother’s born-again carnation into the spiritualistic realms of Christianity, leaving her cold and wanting of the old, wayward ex con she once new and loved. Tamsin reeks of depression as we learn of her Dad’s infidelity with the office Barbie and the tragic death of her sister: Tamsin grimly recalling the debilitating illness which left her bones looking like “somebody had just stuck daggers under her skin.”
Pawel Pawlikowski has done an astounding job of merging a fantastical and ethereal love story with the grounding realism of the county in which it is based. For those of you that can wallow happily in a beautifully ruinous story this film is perfect. Its shots are visually breathtaking, our first glimpse of Tamsin is seen upside down, between spear-like blades of grass, the sun angelically bouncing from her adolescent hooped earrings. Dancing rhythmic and free afore a hazy blue light the two girls move with the frenetic pulse mushrooms have duly given them and a blazing fire silhouettes their love which permits the chance to kill one another if they separate.
All in all, a beautiful film that eagerly rides on a short ‘n’ sweet running time much like the relationship it so happily observes.
