Review of My Summer of Love (2005) by Alarra C — 03 Jan 2006

I went into this having very few ideas of what it was about, and found it a confronting, slightly odd, movie. Lisa (teasingly named "Moaner" or Mona by her brother - get it?), lives above The Swan, which used to be her mother's pub. When her mother dies of cancer, her brother Phil comes home from prison a Jesus freak and plans to convert the pub into a spiritual haven. He's already started filling it with newly made spiritual friends, filling it with fervent prayers instead of the liquor. Mona rebels against his plans and spends most of her days in the fields around town instead; and one sunny day she meets fellow teenager Tamsin, riding haughtily on her white horse.

Tamsin lives in a ramshackle, near-abandoned ivy covered house away from the town, part of a rotting gentility. She's a bit of the same - speaking pretentiously about Neichtze and Freud, listening to Piaf, playing sad cellow pieces, drinking and smoking liberally. Tamsin seems fascinated as with Mona's down and out life - her mother's death and the pub with its crazy 'Christians' and her married boyfriend-ex - as Mona is captivated by Tam's highspoken fancies, her pretty dresses, and her story of the tragic death of her adored older sister Sadie from anorexia. Soon the two girls are spending the summer living as if cut off from the rest of the world, geographically and emotionally, acting out their feverish imaginations in isolated grounds of the old house. They also end up discovering each other with kisses and secrets and mad revenge scenarios on others.

But Phil hasn't given up on his plan to cleanse the things around him with the love of Jesus - he builds and erects a giant cross to overlook the valley their town is in, and prays and prays for his sister. Tamsin takes all his efforts in with her coolly appraising eyes, and then forces a confrontation from boredom. She plays with Phil's mind, and brings his repressed anger and lust to the fore, forcing him to reconsider his newfound spirituality, and to take his sister away from Tam.

Mona still believes she and Tam are in love and in their plan to run away together; she stands up to her broken and furious brother (who has thrown out all his spiritual buddies with a snarl) and packs her bags, leaving with a simple an determined goodbye. When she goes to find Tamsin, however, she finds the other girl packing once again for boarding school, not to run away. The house is full once more - Tam's absentee parents, and more shockingly, a very much alive Sadie, who angrily demands that Mona give back the clothes Tamsin "gifted" Mona with. In tears, Mona sits alone on her favourite rock, in her favourite place, something she shared with Tamsin; and Tam has the nerve to come to her and say that no real harm has been done, and to try to smooth things over by saying Mona is the most amazing person she has ever met, blah blah blah. It seems that Mona believes her, and moves to recreate their first kiss, in the water, in the very same spot - but when Tamsin responds, Mona pulls her head under the water, hands around her neck. When she finally allows Tamsin to break free at the very last moment, Tam's true face is revealed. "You crazy bitch!" she screams: bedraggled, puzzled, beaten. And Mona scrambles away from the water, away into the sunshine.

It's a well-made movie, atmospheric in its languid pace, some shots wonderfully framed, but that last minute dip into the murderous lesbian rage, and then into golden sunshine and 'all-is-fine' is a bit sudden - since the movie mostly conveys a uneasy hurtling-to-tragedy sense throughout, the ending unsettled me and made the movie feel off-kilter.