.. Featured Review
Lush, moody teen romance with the characters at the steering wheel | 24 April 2006 by anglophile19

The relationship at the heart of Pawel Pawlikowski's utterly lush "My Summer of Love" is between two British teenage girls, both very different in their social status as well as their outlook on the world and their own life in general.

Mona (Nathalie Press) lives in a small Yorkshire town, grungy in it's antique structure, and it's no surprise that she lives in perpetual boredom. Her parents are dead, only being looked after by her brother (Paddy Considine), a former hoodlum who turned born-again Christian during his prison stay, spending his free time holding spiritual meetings at his house/former pub for other born-agains and holding grandiose rallies in the Yorkshire hills. He's trying to impose his newfound Christian "love" upon Mona, but she essentially sees this as the loss of her brother, whom she views as ridiculous.

In one of her first scenes in the film, she is seen lying face down in a roadside shoulder, looking comatose and lifeless, and mentally that seems more than an apt depiction of how the summer will likely turn out.

Then, just like a classic fairy tale before it, her summer is salvaged as an affluent, beautiful stranger named Tamsin (Emily Blunt) comes galloping by on a majestic white horse, and Mona's once painfully hopeless existence is irrevocably changed.

And that what ignites a summer long affair, one that moves from a mutual fascination to a sisterly companionship to a fiercely erotic intimacy. Now perhaps this might sound like the path many ambitious stories about youthful romance have taken before it, but the film doesn't so much use this romantic trajectory as a plot accellerator but rather tightly focusing on the characters who inhibit it, gazing over them as they both fall intensely in love, trying to figure out both each other and themselves.

A lesser director might have turned this summer romance into a standard, finger-wagging social essay. And while these characters definitely symbolize their considerably different class positions (something Pawlikowski trenchantly observes, but not overwhelmingly so), the movie does create a wealth of individual traits and first-person viewpoints that help find these characters their own distinct, beating hearts.

And these two particular heroines are definitely a study of contrast. Tamsin is a dreamer; one who is both hyper-intellectualizing and very, very melodramatic (she is a consistent name-dropper of classic writers and musicians from Nietschze to Ediath Piath; she also laments over her dead sister with tear-and-soul-draining operatic outbursts). Since her family has wealth and generally ignores her, the excessive comfort and general unfulfilment that this upper-crust life evokes allows Tamsin to project an exotic life of fanciful make-believe that's not really hers. Mona, on the other hand, is much wryer and de-romanticized, a realist by both situation and natural intuition. Although she certainly has a very impish nature and a gleefully sardonic wit, she still views the world around her with a playful but unvarnished directness, but that certainly doesn't keep her from yearning for something more.

And even as their friendship goes from initial wonderment to sexually fervent intimacy, Paliwosky never opts out for cheap, insubstantial appeasement of lecherous appetites, but rather analyzing the very intimate parts of the two girl's rapport as well as finding the fallout of their romantic passions once the real world starts setting in. There's an absolutely gorgeous, almost surrealistic scene late in the film, as they share a picturesque tango in a crowded, dimly lit ballroom, and it's if, at least in their own minds, they are the only two people in the world, and their relationship has truly met it's apex.

Paul Pawilosky, director of the 2001 drama "Last Resort" and various documentaries, shows much more than promise as an auspicious film-making talent, incisively observing the two girl's plight rather than overstating their obvious differences and shortcomings. He keeps the story fresh, unadorned, finding many striking images in the most mundane arenas. Pawliowsky shows a taut tonal sensibility to the very moody, vaguely haunting ambiguity that the movie consistently illicts, and it helps make this seemingly ordinary film dreamily unforgettable.

But ultimately what is the most compelling aspect of this first-rate seasonal romance is the excellent trio of performances by it's young cast, all playing three noticeably different characters whose agendas aren't always neatly defined. Blunt, the gorgeous young actress who plays Tamsin, has the role that generally calls for a more upfront, charismatic approach to a character fraught with eminent pretension, aggressive intimidation and self-superiority, and she brings a thoroughly awe-inspiring (and breathless) mix of Tamsin's jaded, cynical boredom and heart-on-her-sleeve emotional onslaughts, without making you detest nor really forgive her.

The relatively novice actress Nathalie Press gives one of the most purely astonishing performances of the year as the warm-blooded protagonist Mona, whose steeliness ultimately makes it through her character's toughest tribulations, but her naivetŽ, especially when observing Tamsin, catalyzes her character's awakening. With a freckled, razor-sharp face and a cat-like physical intensity that has garnered appropriate comparisons to a young Sissy Spacek, it's a raw gem of a portrayal that requires a deftly laconic appeal as she plays the observer rather than the aggressor (and the one with whom the audience most likely will find solace), but even as her frightened, crow-dark eyed expression ultimately casts a haunting portrait of innocence lost and a young heart shattered, we ultimately see her pugnacious transition from girl to woman, all with a simple glance and zero vanity.

And Considine, in a terrifingly fervent performance, is a potent study of suppression and oblivious self-deceit; his criminal instincts are perhaps innate, and his fervent spiritual masking of those inexorable traits cast a far more frighting effect than if he just let himself be. It's a performance that deftly mixes up a despondent self-realization and a harsh physical intensity (very much like Press). As does everything else in this indelible tale of youthful innocence and it's unavoidable eradication.

.. External Links
⇒ On IMDb
⇒ On Yahoo! Movies
⇒ Official Site
⇒ On Rotten Tomatoes