Mona, 16 ans, vit seule avec son frère aîné Phil dans un village du Yorkshire. Entre ses aventures sans lendemain et ce frère en pleine crise mystique, elle s'ennuie ferme. Les choses changent le jour où elle rencontre Tamsin, une jolie jeune fille de bonne famille, un peu sombre et rebelle. Celle-ci fascine aussitôt Mona qui, troublée, entrevoit immédiatement de nouvelles perspectives d'avenir.
Synopsis
If there is such a thing as English cinema, as opposed to British cinema, then this new film from Pawel Pawlikowski fits the bill. It has taken a Polish-born director to respond to the exoticism of the English countryside and mannerisms of region and class. Within the Yorkshire Dales' sunlit expanses, he has created a swooning love story with wit, flair, eroticism and some New Wave attitude. His two young leads, Natalie Press and Emily Blunt create a delectable, upwardly-mobile soufflé of a film. Even as its mood turns dark, this tone is managed with superb insouciance, helped by a saturnine performance from Paddy Considine. When the summer ends, as all summers must, sexual obsession, claustrophobia and despair are elegantly resolved with a clever twist in the narrative tail. It's a movie that ... for me is even better on a second viewing, a gem of intelligent, absorbing film-making. My Summer of Love is freely adapted from a novel by Helen Cross, and is a tale of romantic and erotic subversion with Jeanette Winterson's Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit in its DNA. There are also antecedents in Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures, Lynne Ramsay's Morvern Callar and Catherine Hardwicke's Thirteen. Girl meets girl one lazy, hazy summer and the unique intensity of female friendship – so much more vivid than anything experienced by or with those hopeless boys – has a fissile power, an irresistible ignition of strength. Press plays Mona, bored to tears with life in provincial Yorkshire, and especially bored with her brother Phil (Paddy Considine) who is a reformed violent criminal and born-again Christian. Then she meets Tamsin (Emily Blunt), a kindred spirit despite being outrageously posh, who's rusticated from her private girls' school, and whose neglectful parents let her have the run of their magnificent Tudor family home. Mona is captivated by her new friend's callow sophistication and dreamy sensuality. Intimacy is a difficult thing to show on screen, and so is leisure. But Natalie Press and Emily Blunt hang out with freshness and spontaneity, helped by Pawlikowski's improvisatory shooting methods and smart dialogue from screenwriter Michael Wynne. Emily Blunt might well have it in her to be the new Keira Knightley ... and Natalie Press could be the new Samantha Morton, only with the added element of a sense of humour. They've got chemistry all right, and they make their film look like a remix of The Go-Between, only with Mona and Tamsin somehow playing both the lovers and the innocent messenger. It's a dangerous adventure, and a very English one, too. – Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
Synopsis
If there is such a thing as English cinema, as opposed to British cinema, then this new film from Pawel Pawlikowski fits the bill. It has taken a Polish-born director to respond to the exoticism of the English countryside and mannerisms of region and class. Within the Yorkshire Dales' sunlit expanses, he has created a swooning love story with wit, flair, eroticism and some New Wave attitude. His two young leads, Natalie Press and Emily Blunt create a delectable, upwardly-mobile soufflé of a film. Even as its mood turns dark, this tone is managed with superb insouciance, helped by a saturnine performance from Paddy Considine. When the summer ends, as all summers must, sexual obsession, claustrophobia and despair are elegantly resolved with a clever twist in the narrative tail. It's a movie that ... for me is even better on a second viewing, a gem of intelligent, absorbing film-making. My Summer of Love is freely adapted from a novel by Helen Cross, and is a tale of romantic and erotic subversion with Jeanette Winterson's Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit in its DNA. There are also antecedents in Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures, Lynne Ramsay's Morvern Callar and Catherine Hardwicke's Thirteen. Girl meets girl one lazy, hazy summer and the unique intensity of female friendship – so much more vivid than anything experienced by or with those hopeless boys – has a fissile power, an irresistible ignition of strength. Press plays Mona, bored to tears with life in provincial Yorkshire, and especially bored with her brother Phil (Paddy Considine) who is a reformed violent criminal and born-again Christian. Then she meets Tamsin (Emily Blunt), a kindred spirit despite being outrageously posh, who's rusticated from her private girls' school, and whose neglectful parents let her have the run of their magnificent Tudor family home. Mona is captivated by her new friend's callow sophistication and dreamy sensuality. Intimacy is a difficult thing to show on screen, and so is leisure. But Natalie Press and Emily Blunt hang out with freshness and spontaneity, helped by Pawlikowski's improvisatory shooting methods and smart dialogue from screenwriter Michael Wynne. Emily Blunt might well have it in her to be the new Keira Knightley ... and Natalie Press could be the new Samantha Morton, only with the added element of a sense of humour. They've got chemistry all right, and they make their film look like a remix of The Go-Between, only with Mona and Tamsin somehow playing both the lovers and the innocent messenger. It's a dangerous adventure, and a very English one, too. – Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
