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My Summer of Love
2004, 1920x1040
Emily
Blunt and Natalie Press
Blunt
Blunt and Press
Scoop's notes:
This film is kind of an interesting
illustration of the gap between the kind of films
loved by film "insiders" and the kind that people
really want to see. My Summer of Love was a complete
critical success in the USA, with 90% positive
reviews, and an even more impressive 97% from the
inner circle of top-level critics, as estimated by
Rotten Tomatoes. Despite the spate of positive reviews
scattered through the American newspapers and across
the internet, it was seen by no more than 125,000
people. It wasn't a very different matter in Britain.
My Summer of Love received the coveted BAFTA award as
the best British film of 2004, but it could manage to
gross no more than half a million pounds. Between the
two nations, the film never played in as many as 100
theaters at the same time.
The reason I find this disparity interesting is that
My Summer of Love does not fall within any of the
categories of film you would imagine after having read
the paragraph above.
It is not some kind of arty, aloof, or surrealistic
film like Last Year at Marienbad or Eyes Wide Shut,
the kind of film that critics love to extol as an
example of how they possess insights not available to
the rest of us. Of course, every specialty profession
requires something to distinguish it from the laity,
or the profession would not exist at all. Priests have
their secret incantations, the ability to consecrate
bread and wine, and the ability to forgive at
confession. Heart surgeons have their skillful fingers
and their knowledge of anatomy. Engineers have the
mathematical and scientific knowledge that enables
them to build a bridge from Italy to Sicily when the
rest of us could not even begin to imagine how such a
thing might be done. Movie critics - well, they ain't
got jack. I won't trust you to operate on my heart,
and I won't drive on a bridge you build, but for some
reason, if I am allowed to ask you a couple of
questions about a movie you saw, I will trust your
judgment as much as Roger Ebert's. Given that fact,
critics try to justify their positions with some body
of "expertise" that enables them to see values which
are not apparent to the rest of us. Unfortunately,
that expertise is illusory, and they rarely seem to
realize that these opinions place them in the position
of the Naked Emperor, and not the High Priest. Pretty
much anyone with common sense can see that critics are
just bullshitting when they praise these arty films,
and such opinions are dismissed off-hand. But My
Summer of Love is not in this category. It has a
straightforward narrative and is completely
accessible.
Nor is it a leftist political diatribe, of the type
that critics love because of the point of view, but
audiences don't care about because they don't go to
movies to hear somebody's point of view, right or
left. When you get right down to it, moviegoers don't
really mind if you're going to insert your viewpoint
into a film - as long as you make it entertaining or
moving or funny.
So what kind of movie is this? An intimate personal
story.
A young working class girl in a small
Yorkshire town feels the ennui setting into her life.
School's out for summer and the best entertainment
available is "riding" her scooter around the environs -
a task made considerably less exciting by the fact that
it has no motor, so it's only fun on the downhill
stretches. She has no friends. She lives above a pub.
Her parents are gone. Her brother is an ex-con turned
religious zealot. The hours drag.
Then her life suddenly fills with an exciting new
friendship. An urbane rich girl from a nearby estate is
home from boarding school, and her own boredom leads her
into a bond with the other girl. That bond eventually
leads beyond friendship and into hot girl-on-girl
action. They two of them seem to be so much in love that
they are planning to run away together, and then ...
You'll have to watch the movie to get the rest, but I
guess I can tell you that the movie's title is a
complete spoiler. It is called MY Summer of Love, not
OUR Summer of Love, and the obvious limitation imposed
by the word "summer" means that autumn just ain't gonna
work out so well. You'll see. Besides, first love always
hurts, doesn't it?
One of the more interesting undercurrents in the film is
the lingering residue of feudalism in Europe. There was
a time when the vassals of the continent were actually
the property of the rich, and would be used for their
amusement. It would certainly not have been uncommon in
those days for a young aristocrat to romance any number
of pretty serf girls, perhaps even stringing them along
with promises of a better life. Even after feudalism
disintegrated, European society was still contaminated
with a virus of aristocrats who felt that peasants
existed solely for the comfort and amusement of their
betters. (Read about the Marquis de Sade to experience
an extremely radical strain of this virus.) Part of the
premise of this film is that the latter-day aristocracy
has not changed as much as we would like to believe.
This script has some subtly-developed characterization,
and even a few interesting plot twists here and there. I
was impressed with the cinematography, which bathes
summer in a soft amber glow, then strips away the soft
make-up to photograph people and places in the harsh
tones of reality when autumn arrives. It's easy to see
why critics were impressed by My Summer of Love, and
this is the sort of movie that many people would enjoy
if they happened to catch it at a friend's house or
watched it on cable in an intimate group or alone.
Unfortunately, it is not the kind of film that many
people will go out of their way to see, and it it not
the kind of film you should watch with a raucous group
or as a backdrop to some other activity, because it
requires you to get deep inside of the girls' lives.
I'm in the same boat that most of you would be in. I'd
never get off my duff to watch this kind of deliberately
crafted movie unless I had no choice, but once I was
inside of it, and focused on it, I liked it. That is the
nature of the industry, and a reflection of the
inherently small market for this kind of quiet,
understated story.
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