My Summer of Love movie review (2005)

The movie is sweet and languid when the girls are together, edgier when Mona is around Phil. The question of Tamsin's father is complicated by the presence of his "personal assistant." The big summer house is empty and lonely, lacking a mother and haunted by the ghost of the dead sister. Pawel Pawlikowski, the director and co-writer (with Michael Wynne), wisely allows then time to seem to flow, instead of pushing it. That's why, when Phil visits Tamsin's house looking for Mona, how Tamsin behaves and what happens is such a cruel surprise. She is, we realize, a convincing actress. When more revelations come in a closing scene, they are not exactly a surprise, not exactly a tragedy, not exactly very nice. We begin to sense the buried irony in the title.

Emily Blunt is well-cast as Tamsin, a rich girl, product of the best schools, who cultivates decadence as her way of standing apart from what's expected of her. Natalie Press as Mona, on the other hand, is straight from the shoulder: She's without illusions about life, has given up on her brother, looks forward to marriage and family as a dreary prospect. Without quite saying so, she knows she'll never find a husband in her Yorkshire valley who is up to her speed. Will she, after this summer, identify as a lesbian? Doubtful. The summer stands by itself.

I'm not sure if the movie has a point. I'm not sure it needs one. I learn from Variety that the screenplay is inspired by a novel by Helen Cross that also involves a miner's strike and some murders. All of that is missing here, and what's left is a lazy summer of sweaty uncertain romance; this isn't a coming-of-age movie so much as a movie about being of an age. At the end, when Tamsin tries to explain herself to Mona, we understand how completely different these two teenage girls are; how one deals in irony and deception, and with the other what you see is what you get, whether you want it or not.

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