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BEYOND ‘THERAPY by Christopher Durang
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Contemporary Love—Triangie Comedy! V

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Young Women

In Love

BY EUAN BEAR

 

My summer of Love
Natalie Press, Emily
Blunt, Paddy considine
Directed by Pawel
Pawlikowski

T he friend I had bumped into
at the theatre told me later
that My Summer of Love
“certainly wasn’t anything like I
was expecting.” Teenage girls from
different ‘backgrounds meet one
summer, bond in their isolation and
alienation across class
lines, and magic happens.
Well, yes and no.

It’s not exactly a com-
ing of age story. It’s not a
simple teenage romance —
(not that teenage romance
is ever as simple as
patronizing adults like to
think). And it’s not in the
least bit pornographic,
even with a male director
framing the shots .
(although this male direc-
tor, Pawel Pawlikowski,
has made a name for him-
self for his “outsider”
points of view).

_ From the first scene,
there’s the engineless
scooter working-class
“Mona” Lisa (Natalie
Press) rides down a dusty
Yorkshire road. And the
first interaction she has
with Tamsin (Emily
Blunt) is looking up from flat on
the ground to the rich girl’s horse-
back height.

There’s Mona’s ex-con brother
Phil (Paddy Considine) pouring the
house stock of booze down the drain
of their late mother’s pub as, in an
excess of born-again zeal, he pursues
his vision of turning the pub into a
spiritual center for Christians to
“bring hope back into this valley.”

The sun pours down like magic
molten gold on gorse- and heather-
covered hills, one of which will be
the site of the massive wood and iron
cross Phil is building. The honeyed
glow halos red-haired Mona and bur-
nishes even Tamsin’s brunette locks.

Tamsin has been suspended
from her. boarding school, and is
thus home for an indeterminate
period. Mona apparently has left
school or is on summer vac.
Parents are either dead (Mona) or
missing in action (Tamsin). Not
much impinges on the intensity of
their self-focused world. Their
bond grows when Tamsin takes
Mona in a taxi to see where her
father’s car is parked outside the
home of his assistant (though she
seems more offended that the assis-
tant is a blowsy broad than that her
dad is betraying his marital vows to

her mother, who is traveling).

Mona dashes up to the car,
picks up a garden gnome and
smashes the driver’s side window,
exacting an impulsive vengeance
on Tamsin’s behalf, impinging on
the oblivious adult. Later Tamsin
returns the favor, embarrassing
Mona’s married ex-boyfriend in
public and telling his wife about
the affair. But so isolated are the
two that there are no consequences
for either action.

Press and Blunt are novices in
the film world, but there is definite-
ly chemistry between them.
Pawlikowski gave all the actors an
outline of the major points of the

script, but encouraged collaboration
and improvisation. Blunt said in an
interview on National Public Radio
that Pawlikowski asked her what
else she did, and then incorporated
her admitted cello playing into one
scene. The script is loosely based
on a novel by Helen Cross,
although the novel includes murder
and a miner’s strike (which would
explain the desperate need to
“bring hope back into the valley”
via the seductive dream of a per-

sonal god who rewards goodness). '

Mona has dreams, lofty and less
so, and perhaps it’s a clue that we
never hear Tamsin’s. Tamsin has
money, with which she buys an _
engine for Mona’s scooter, freeing
them both, at least temporarily.
Tamsin is a mirror reflecting the
self-delusions of others, catching
them at it and laughing while
excusing herself as a “fantasist.”

My Summer of Love is an
aphingly beautiful film, gold over

life’s gritty gravel, and guess
which one prevails? It’s a movie
about acting and surface and seem-
ing versus passion and commit-
ment and truth. It’s a film worth
seeing when it arrives at the Savoy
this fall or when it comes out in
DVD, although, unless you have a
large-screen home-theater, the
impact of the countryside will be
diminished.

My Summer of Love—will remind
you of your first love, and how
hard it is to find someone worthy
of your trust, and how easy it is to
break someone’s heart. It will
remind you of how, afterward, you
moved on. V