Summer of Love

2001, 1080hd

Johnny's comments:

Still going with the Australian Classics, today a movie I thought was lost to time...

Summer Of Love is a 2001 romantic drama where Amanda (Natalie Laing) joins her boyfriend Tom (Scott Corfield) on the South Australian coast, hoping to move on after the funeral of her father. Instead, she contemplates leaving Tom or at least have more sexual experience with the suggestion of an open relationship. At the shops, Amanda meets American artist Michael (Ryan Miller) who is in town for a big art project, though nothing comes of their brief encounter until the next day when they bump into each other at the beach. Michael convinces Amanda to swim over to the caves and while there, they have sex. Amanda tells Tom about this and he can't believe that she would find someone else to have sex with so quickly and contemplates leaving her. Amanda continues to see Michael while Tom decides to have a chat with Michael and ends up becoming friends with him. After a dinner together, the three have sex and it goes so well that they decide to have a polyamorous relationship. Things go well for a while with an occasional hiccup but after Amanda's mother comes to visit to see if she is doing alright coping with her father's death, Amanda becomes reluctant to continue the relationship. Michael meets local woman Briana (Bree Maddox) and they start having sex which settles it for Amanda and she not only ends the polyamorous relationship but decides to return to Sydney.

Long forgotten movie that was actually made-for-TV and funded in part by Channel 9, bafflingly so, as the movie only played once in the final days of 2001 and was never seen again until it turned up on Amazon in the last year. Channel 9's involvement is bizarre, as this movie is pretty low rent and doesn't look like anything they usually made in that period, although it does have that patented Channel 9 sleaze. Director Wayne Groom already had a list of notorious movies before making this movie; he produced the absolute dog shit sleaze-fest Centrespread and wrote and directed nudist beach movie Maslin Beach (another movie I need to get around to capping).

Summer Of Love is a fairly simple tale, basically a three hander with Bree Maddox thrown in to show a bit of skin when the time is right. The movie feels more like a soap opera and the acting isn't exactly astounding, the three leads barely having a career. Neither of the male characters are interesting, not even the American artist and a big deal is made of Amanda's mood swings and she has plenty of them making her pretty annoying. The exploration of the polyamorous relationship is interesting and is handled fairly well, if only the male characters were worth the effort. The movie is a fair bit less sleazy than Groom's previous movies but he can't help himself by casting nude model Maddox, her character incredibly one dimensional that it's a surprise when it takes over an hour for the requisite sleaze. I haven't seen Maslin Beach for a while and barely remember it but I can say that Summer Of Love is better than Centrespread, not by much, but at least it has a logical plot and treats the central relationship with some dignity. Having said that, Summer Of Love is basically a soap opera with a lot more sex and nudity and is clearly made for television as there are requisite ad breaks like a soap opera but most of them are in between scenes in the most baffling places.

Natalie Laing film clip (collages below)

Bree Maddox film clip (collage below)