“My Summer of Love” is a youth drama of the year 2004 of British production, shot by Polish filmmaker Pavel Pawlikowski (a frequent guest of numerous Russian friends, which is especially pleasant during the period of tense political relations between Russia and Poland) based on the novel by Helen Cross, for which this film was the first and so far the last adaptation of her work (the adaptation was done by Pawlikowski himself, as well as Michael Wynn). The budget for My Summer of Love was $1.7 million, so you can guess that the film is independent and intended for international film festivals. By the way, they were accompanied by luck – several prestigious awards “My Summer of Love” collected. The main roles in it were played by 24-year-old Natalie Press and 21-year-old Emily Blunt, the company was 30-year-old Paddy Considine (all three, by the way, are English).
Young bohemian city dweller Tamzin (Blunt) comes to the English periphery, where she is languishing with boredom. After a while, she meets a “gray mouse” from the neighboring houses of Mona (Press). Mona is overjoyed, because she's not very happy living in these places, and then a girl like Tamsin drew attention to her! Soon, friends spend all their free time with each other, and they have a great many. Only Mona’s older brother, Phil (Considine), is not particularly enthusiastic about her new friend, feeling something bad in her, and people of faith always feel this, because Phil after a criminal youth came to Christianity and became an ardent adherent of religion. But Monet doesn't care about Phil's words, and Tamsin is having fun and almost flirting with Phil. But at this time, Mona became too close to Tamsin and became obsessed with her.
In our time, when total political correctness and indulgence for sexual minorities gradually crosses all conceivable and unthinkable boundaries, My Summer of Love can be called a pioneer of this kind of cinema. Moreover, Pavlikovsky even managed to bypass the scandal, because the film tells about lesbian relationships of girls who have just become adults. But Pavlikovsky gracefully avoids the very fact of same-sex love, manifested only as a desire to know something sharp, something forbidden, something vaguely desired, while everyday life, faceless and without light at the end of the tunnel, only pushes to the first sexual experience. It could be, by the way, not girls, but quite a common male-female couple, but a little “pepper” why not pour? And the current LGBT community can boast of the film My Summer of Love. The Puritans are unlikely to accept it, but I still advise the potential viewer not to pay attention to the homosexual themes of the film.
Talking about the actors and their characters, I will try to explain why same-sex love in My Summer of Love is not the main thing. I'll start with Natalie Press. For her, this role was the second participation in a full-length feature film. The press very well conveyed a rural girl who has little chance of achieving anything in the future other than to meet some "good farmer" or at best a "blue-collar," to have several children and hope that her husband does not get drunk. And here on the horizon is a brilliant new friend who easily manipulates her, although Mona does not oppose it at all. That’s why the poor girl is especially sorry, and if she evokes such emotions, then Natalie Press has done a good job. It is a pity that her career did not go further. Unlike her partner Emily Blunt, for whom My Summer of Love was also her second feature film. Blunt proved her huge potential by playing such a bright, but still insidious Tamsin. I will not paint her character in all colors, since I give the viewer the opportunity to enjoy the game of the then young Blunt. It reminds me of Sarah Michelle Gellar’s insidious character from Cruel Games. And Emily Blunt here is announced in such a way that the future star of “Reality Changers”, “Edges of the Future” and “Murderers” in such a way did not notice. But I want to thank her agent (or maybe her parents or Emily herself) for not being ashamed to sign the actress for the role in My Summer of Love, which gave a strong impetus to further career.
7 out of 10
My Summer of Love is a British film made by Oscar-winning director Pavel Pawlikowski. For “My Summer”, Pavlikovsky received a prize from the British Academy with the wording “for the most outstanding British film of the year”.
In one of the main roles lit up then still beginning actress Emily Blunt. Now Emily is a real superstar, but twelve years ago she was posh and irresistible. Her screen partner Natalie Press is a little-known actress, but in this movie she acted so masterfully that she even slightly outplayed the charismatic Blunt.
“My Summer” is almost always included in all sorts of ratings and lists on the theme “The best films about lesbian love”. However, frank lesbian scenes are almost not observed here, so lovers of strawberry nature can not strain. However, can relax and connoisseurs of sweet romantic relationships.
My Summer of Love is a film about treachery and sex, about betrayal and generosity, about gullibility and lost illusions, about naive dreams and harsh reality, about sacrifice and arrogance, about the devil and God. At the same time, the skill of the operator and young actresses is simply off the scale.
Verdict: a very pleasant arthouse movie on a sensitive topic. There is something to see and there is something to think about.
I don’t like books about sexual minorities, especially lesbians. I'm not a connoisseur of this particular trend, but what I saw inevitably turned into one of two crooked paths - wretched eroticism or even more wretched politically correct-feminist nonsense. However, My Summer of Love takes you where you need to go – into the wilds of intricate and exciting human relationships, where the same-sex context is just a detail.
She lives in a small English town, Mona. Around it are all dull philistines, living a boring life and long reconciled to the grayness of their existence. Mona's not like that. She has no special talents, education, or even beauty, but she lives with sincere feelings, only to apply them nowhere and to no one. Her only relative, her older brother, after returning from prison, suddenly turns to religion. As a result, the family bar closes, and the room is filled with squalid, clinging to Jesus with the same enthusiasm with which they recently grabbed a glass. Monu is just sick of this spectacle - she clearly sees all the falsity and absurdity of the situation, but the only person close to her moves away from her.
And here on the horizon there is Tamzin - a girl from a rich estate outside the city. She is completely unlike Mona's acquaintances, intelligent, beautiful, mysterious and Mona's heart melts from unspent feelings. However, we know that in love there is always an unequal partnership and the one who loves sincerely will have to suffer.
I’m a long way from declaring a film a masterpiece (even though it’s been showered with awards in the UK), but it confirms a very likable idea – you don’t have to have a lot of money to make a good movie. In the film there are no stars, special effects, everything is very modest, even chamberly, but there is a good script and smart directing and this solves the case. The picture is intriguing at the beginning, maintains tension in the middle and does not let you be disappointed at the end.
The finale is simply chic and chic he is precisely because there is no “cinema” chicness in it. And it's true that when your heart breaks with a quiet ringing and you realize that you don't care about your soul, do we really think about how to impress the audience? No, it's very realistic and ridiculous, just like life. No one will die and will not torment our ears with melodramatic speeches, but there will be much more feelings than in popular blockbusters.
Sad story, good movie. This is not about lesbians.
Why do they make movies? For beauty, moral or physical. Two girls meet, or rather, one finds the other. And then they walk together, discussing the vicissitudes of fate. One girl is right Miss Mira, Oksana Fedorova. The other is charming for its uglyness, it has charm. They have complete harmony - mental and physical, and they do not need anyone else. A "two-seat coupe" races past flowering fields and waterfalls, with the conflict pushed back towards the end of the film. How will the author get out? Will there be a powerful, all-justifying ending? There’s nothing in the movie except the close-ups of two girls, but it’s somehow magically holding you back.
The author of the film said that he spent a lot of effort on the selection of actresses. And in that respect, he certainly succeeded. The duet is fused, soldered and sung like a good opera. But the brother (another hero) was not enough. This nebulous brother, with a criminal past, now entering the sect, now coming out of it, is unconvincing - from literary and from all other points of view. If the main thing is the relationship of the girls, then he could intervene, make adjustments. But late - the viewer himself opened the shell and saw the pearl.
Which ends up. Childhood betrayal hurts the heart incomparably. The inconclusive brother is forgotten. And we got another chamber romance, presented with all possible skill.
In the English province, life is easy and carefree: a young and freckled Mona for the time being just lies in the grass, sometimes drinking, sometimes drawing female images on the walls, until she meets Tamzin - a young girl from a clearly wealthy family, who, according to a long-standing high-class tradition, has no parents. The first is almost British white trash: for nothing that lives on the second floor of a former pub (it is worth noting that in Britain, the declassed layer of society feels somewhat better than in the United States: the pub is not a rusty house on wheels after all) with her knotted brother, who turned to Christianity and turned such a homely and so cozy British pub into a monstrous parish - something between church and house, where former drunks from AA gather; Mona has a terrible accent, and she thinks, more precisely, that she wants to become a good lawyer. The second is a beetle girl: proudly and confidently looks at everything around her, quoting Nietzsche (of course, to impress her friend), frankly misses; with a cigarette in her hands or a glass of wine; left to herself, outside the walls of a prestigious boarding house - she can do whatever she wants. And she does. An innocent friendly kiss - why not?
But the story is not quite about that: lesbian motifs here act only as bait for the viewer. Delicately filmed scenes of unity in nature and with nature are calm and monotonous - like Yorkshire landscapes, against which events unfold, the plans are moderately beautiful and absolutely classic - like Emily Blunt's boob jumping while walking in a pink jersey. A slight touch of summer fleur, a little sentiment about past childhood, allusions to the biblical Eden, where there is no Adam, teenage longing, anticipating important future changes in the lives of both heroines, the gentle flying light reflected in the freckled face of Natalie Press - all this framing and components of an ordinary inherently instructive story about growing up and finding yourself. The girls swear that they will always be together and go to heaven. Of course, they are not restrained, because of the female nature and because one of them only plays “love during the holidays.” And the message here is much more ambitious than it may seem at first glance, everyone pretends: one imagines himself an aesthetic emotional vampire, the other seems that she does not like the guy with a mountain of muscles with whom she was recently in the car, a rowdy and alcoholic suddenly becomes interested in Christ.
And Tamsin said that Nietzsche said that God is dead, paraphrasing this statement you can say that sincerity is dead – this story. Locked in her room, Mona draws a framed portrait of Tamzin on the wall and kisses him exactly like a crucifix, and then the next frame is a huge cross on the hill erected by Mona’s brother in His name – a kind of and rather daring directorial opposition to two, in general, identical cases: someone give love, someone faith. Not knowing the measure and not finding the strength to go beyond or at least just be honest with themselves, everyone runs away from themselves, but in the end everyone and fake. And yet, for some, this story will be a valuable lesson, in which literally forcibly handed a ticket to adulthood - and this, oddly enough, is not so bad. It is no coincidence that, after a heartbreaking denouement, in the last frame there is a slight hint of a smile: another second - and Mona will smile, but we will not see it - the camera moves away, and the viewer sees only the back of the heroine; she confidently goes away, no, even for her it is not a tragedy, although I really want to believe it. Empty drama. Disappointment. She understood everything, in the big world, everything is a game, and here they are - the last moments of agonizing anticipation, the sunlight is becoming clearer, the water in the river is colder, summer is over, it's time to grow up.
Mona lives with her older brother in the suburbs of Yorkshire, in a house with the fabulous name “Swan”. The former pub has now become a parish of prayer: after serving time in prison, the brother became the spiritual pastor of the local religious community. Despite this kinship, Mona leads an unrighteous life - she fucks a married man. And now in the last summer of childhood, about which it is no longer necessary to write the essay “How I spent the holidays”, an Amazon on a white horse bursts into Mona’s life – a rich Malvin named Tamsin.
While Tamsin's mother is touring and her father is sleeping at her secretary's, she spends her summers alone in a luxurious two-story fazenda and looks for ways to have fun. Tamsin is well educated: he plays the cello of Saint-Saëns, quotes Nietzsche and listens to Edith Piaf. She and Mona are united not only by loneliness, but also by grief: Mona’s mother died, Tamsin’s sister. Girls walk, girls talk, kiss a lot and ride a moped, drink wine, lie on the grass, and animals, like their younger brothers, never hit on the head.
Now they are brought together not only common pranks (not always harmless), but also sex. And now Monet begins to feel that in the person of Tamsin she met her true great love. Gentle hugs are so easily and organically masked under this feeling that it is impossible for a sexually mature maiden flesh to resist. Their innocent kissing is also a challenge to hypocritical dads and moms, addicted to religion brothers and married boyfriends.
In any case, for Mona, such an experience is much more valuable and romantic than a crustacean skit on the hood of someone else's car, when with your help someone's lust is only rudely satisfied.
- Do you fuck often? asks Tamsin at Mona's.
- Sometimes it is planted...
- Is that terrible?
- Normal - as always...
And now Monet is lucky: now there is a place to hide from his brother, who imagines himself the new Jesus. A wretched duckling meets the girl of his dreams, finds love and decides that it is time for her to become a white swan. Young celestial creatures, lost and reckless, swear eternal loyalty to each other and are about to leave this "Fucking Yorkshire" forever. However, the short-lived absolute happiness of a hundred days after childhood turns into a ruthless initiation..., an unexpected and belated realization that you have been cold-blooded and cynically fucked.
Ethnic Pole Pavel Pawlikowski, who has settled in Britain since the age of fifteen, is not the last person for us. Previously shot a non-fiction film about Dostoevsky and Venechka Erofeev, in 1998 he staged the film “Stringer” with Bodrov Jr. in the title role, and two years later “The Last Refuge”, which fans of Dina Korzun consider almost her best work in cinema. In fact, here the ex-Pole sends Russia not fiery, but still hello. In the film, there is a scene where Mona turns the globe in search of a place where they could escape for a couple, and, pointing a finger blindly, falls into Omsk.
Pawlikowski is one of the few British filmmakers to resist dependence on the American market, whose influence is perhaps nowhere more felt than in Britain. In My Summer Of Love, he does not try to intrigue the viewer through action, focusing mainly on creating a real life texture, interest in which, presumably, he has retained since his days in non-fiction films. Therefore, the film as long as possible avoids any dramatization and sharp twists of the plot, but instead offers something much more - that rare poetic mood, which then remains in memory for a long time.
He restricts himself as much as possible in artistic techniques (but not in the means of expression - so much gentle summer light is not often seen in movies) and seems to get rid of the need to draw proper conclusions: to expose hypocrisy and evil. Pavlikovsky’s excursions to Russian literature were not in vain: here, too, the conflict between “poor people” and “the flowers of evil” is almost obvious. The cultural context did not go unnoticed: along with such films as Haneke’s “Hidden” and the Dardennes’ “Child”, the picture was included in the prestigious list of nominees for the main European film prize at the end of the year.
From the first shots to the painfully familiar art-house story about the summer and girls teasing the viewer pseudo-lesbian relationships. Even the social class differences of the heroines do not make them any contrast in comparison with each other.
Both of them, devoid of motivation for their actions, almost merging with the characteristic English landscape, give the impression of people, pointlessly spinning in front of an amateur camera. Summer, holidays, youth and eternal puberty longing.
It's such a vast life. Youth that seems endless when you look at it from the perspective of your sixteen years. And what to do with this life is not clear.
Teenage girls are looking for their trunk of lava, entangled in the confusion of their own fantasies and true reality. Girls with no real passion. Everyone is looking for her man, but somewhere tenaciously and monotonously the director clearly deliberately carries out the idea that all men are still “theirs”. That's why girls try to play lesbian. Lesbian aestheticists, with dialogues about Nietzsche and beautiful slides. It's also deadly boring. Someone likes to sigh over the mundane almost Victorian pictures of modern England, without teenage pus or some Larry Clark, who put his dirty paws to the tart grace of a frisky teenager.
But it's too boring. Too bourgeois. It's too quiet.
A small village. A teenage girl is bored all day long. Sluay meetings with adult men for the sake of sex do not bring happiness, a brother, a former prisoner, and now a fanatical Christian, made a kind of church from a pub that they inherited from their mother. And one day, walking along the field, the girl meets her peer - she came for the summer holidays. Friendship is formed...
Interesting story. Nice story. The film reminds me of the Dreamers. There is a certain atmosphere of pure love, when attraction and desire take away completely, without residue. There was a second storyline, the religious one. The director was able to clearly and logically combine two such complex and different themes in one film. A separate theme is the main characters. Emily Blunt (Reality Changers) did a great job. Well, Natalie Press is generally, for me personally, a godsend. A girl of a peculiar appearance, as they say, for an amateur. But not falling in love with her is impossible. In general, the plot is interesting and melodrama and drama, the actors’ play is excellent, but the director’s work left questions. There was a feeling of understatement, as if they forgot to show a couple of scenes.
7 out of 10
Growing up is always hard, especially when you’re alone. When you don’t know what you want out of life... When you have no idea of the harsh reality and continue to live in the world of your dreams. That is, you live like Mona – the main character of the film by Pavel Pavlikovsky “My Summer of Love”.
Despite the small timekeeping, the lack of exciting plot twists and the monotony that permeates the entire narrative, My Summer of Love turned out to be a very emotional and realistic picture. The point is not in the originality of the plot, which is actually banal, but in how it is shown. On the example of the love story of two different, but equally lonely girls, Mona and Tamsin, the film depicts the problems of self-realization of the individual, the unwillingness to accept the world as it is and as a result, immersion “in myself” and alienation from society. At first glance, it may seem like a movie about being gay, but it’s not. My Summer of Love is not about lesbians, but about psychological problems and complexes. The love relationship between the girls is shown tactfully and does not focus on itself. Here it is important not that the main characters are attracted to each other (love is not here), but what exactly pushed them to this.
Mona refuses to become an adult. She is lonely and sad, because once beloved brother, who served a prison sentence, came out from behind bars a completely different person. Therefore, it is not surprising that Mona finds solace in a relationship with a “femme fatale”. Tamsin, depressed by the death of her sister from anorexia and embodied on the screen by the beautiful Emily Blunt, whose peculiar talent will play a large role in revealing the character of her heroine. The unusualness of this actress lies in the fact that in one shot she can be a typical femme fatale, attracting a cold arrogant look to herself; in another - a charming, slightly simple girl, unsuccessfully trying to solve her personal problems; and in the third, her appearance can undergo such changes that nothing will remain of a pretty face, and the viewer will look at a natural horse muzzle (not to offend Blunt said, just confirms her outstanding acting abilities).
Awareness of something wrong always comes through pain. Similarly, a person grows up. It is pain that helps to soberly assess the harsh reality - it is an idea that runs through the film and connects all the problems involved in it. “My Summer of Love” is not distinguished by exquisite shooting, beauty in the frame, originality of the plot and the main idea, but... this movie is very vital. It simply and concisely depicts the psychological issues that the average person faces almost daily. Is there any viewer who thinks this movie is irrelevant? This is a question that no one can answer positively.