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Directed by Pawel Pawlikowski
Pawel Pawlikowski's makes magic on a small budget in "My Summer of Love", a riveting, tense and exceptionally well acted story of friendship and deception, both of others and oneself.
Working class Mona meets Tamsin, a spoiled daughter from a wealthy family, by chance over summer vacation. The two girls, neither of whom is particularly stable, embark on a passionate relationship that threatens to swallow them both. Meanwhile, Mona’s brother Phil, recently released from prison, claims to have found Good appears to have turned his life around, leading a worship group from inside his old pub.
When a movie is referred to as “hypnotic” (as “My Summer of Love” boasts on the DVD cover) I rarely expect to actually be riveted to such an extent. Much to my surprise, however, I found myself quite literally hypnotized by Pawlikowski’sfilm. Indeed, I made the poor decision of starting the film right before I should have headed to bed and was immediately riveted, so much so that I literally had to force myself to quit watching an hour past my usual bed time. “My Summer of Love’s” Svengali like grip is due to a number of factors, but cief among them is the tight direction of Pawlikowski who masterfully builds up tension between Mona and Tamsin, as well as the acting of Emily Blunt and Nathalie Press which is fantastic throughout.
Although at its core “My Summer of Love” is about the twisted relationship between Mona and Tamsin, the religious “rebirth” of Mona’s brother Phil is also an important underlying theme. In this regard, “My Summer of Love” seems to take a rather cynical view of religion (in this case a sort of revivalist Christianity). I can understand where Helen Cross, the author of "My Summer of Love" was coming from in her vision of Christianity as a religion riddled with hypocrisy and her portrayal of Phil’s “followers” is not entirely inaccurate, unfortunately. But Cross is no doubt attacking the fringe here, painting a picture of insincere and immature believers whose “faith” is little more than an attempt to escape the difficulties of their past lives. I thought it was a bit of an ugly and unfair portrayal of Christianity but discerning viewers should be able to come to their own conclusions about Cross's treatment of this subject.
2 comments:
This sounds interesting. It WOULD be nice to see an attempt at an accurate portrayal of faith in a movie like this, but I suppose it is hoping for too much. I would agree, there is certainly enough hypocrisy to go around among so-called Christians, but there is also a lot of genuine, committed, earnest faith, too bad it rarely gets sympathetic treatment in the movies.
Yes, and thus my unfavourable view of that aspect of the movie. The rest of it was tremendous though so I couldn't condemn it outright but you can tell that the film (and the novel that inspired it) has a bone to pick with so called "conversions" of the formerly unrepentant. It isn't a bad subject to explore and I think the hypocrisy of some self-professed converts is fodder for an in depth examination but this wasn't really a fair portrayal.
The rest of the film was flawless though.
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