The Summer Book, 2025.
Directed by Charlie McDowell.
Starring Glenn Close, Anders Danielsen Lie, Ingvar E. Sigurðsson, Pekka Strang, Sophia Heikkilä, Emily Matthews, and Theo Zilliacus.
SYNOPSIS:
Follows the inspirational tale of a young girl and her grandmother spending a summer on a small, uninhabited island in the Gulf of Finland.
Moving to a Finnish island summer home for the grieving after a tragic loss, director Charlie McDowell’s The Summer Book (based on a novel by Tove Jansson and adapted by Robert Jones) is a timeless story not necessarily solely for its effective if familiar themes explored, but that setting itself, which seems to transcend time. Although there is no modern technology present, there is also no definitive evidence to suggest that the film isn’t set in a contemporary world. It’s as isolated as its characters, which the filmmakers mine for lyrical beauty, even if the pacing is something one fights throughout.
Emotions are muted, which is fine given the narrative’s simplistic nature. This is an earthly mood piece primarily centered on eight-year-old Sophia (newcomer Emily Matthews, entirely believable and playing up complicated feelings without a false note), naturally still devastated about the loss of her mom but also testy that her checked-out, cold father (Anders Danielsen Lie of terrific Norwegian works such as The Worst Person in the World) has been behaving this way since her death. According to Sophia, he stopped loving her when mom died. Of course, that’s not true; he’s depressed and doesn’t know how to go on being a father anymore, so he throws himself into work while hoping this vacation will do something to bring him all of that dark fog.
Grandmother (Glenn Close, momentarily escaping a Netflix machine that has given her a sad run consisting of some of the worst roles of her career, here reminding what sturdy, reliable, minimalistic, and moving work she is still capable of when given the right material and working with acutely observant filmmakers) also knows that Father needs time to heal. The dilemma is that Grandmother is dying and can only function as a parent for so long, meaning that there is only so much time to go around for him to pick himself up and put it together. This predicament also puts The Summer Book at a fascinating crossroads of coming-of-age and coming-of-death storytelling, with the latter using what limited time is left to impart as much as possible unto a precocious child.
A good portion of those life experiences involves Girl Scouts, meaning that when Father is off working or upsetting Sophia through inadvertent neglect, she and Grandmother soak up the scenery exploring the island (which is gorgeously and serenely presented by cinematographer Sturla Brandth Grøvlen), studying nature, and living a great outdoors life. There also appears to be some degenerative memory issues going on with Grandmother (which is more likely natural memory loss rather than something aggressively debilitating like dementia in this case), as she can’t recall certain feelings, such as what it was like to sleep in a tent. Soon, Sophia is able to relay her version of that experience in a warm moment, intriguingly bringing up the idea that the youth and elderly are constantly learning from one another in something as cyclical as the circle of life, which feels intentional and pointed, given how much focus goes into the presentation of environmental surroundings.
The Summer Book is driven less by plot and more by tenderness and leisurely exploration. It’s slow-paced, with not much happening, and sometimes to a fault, but also rarely without beauty in one of its frames. Something is calming, even hypnotic, when the camera is fixated on tracking these characters’ moves through surroundings ranging from beaches to rocks, as if the characters and nature have become one. There is also no denying that the narrative is slight, but the performances and scenery are subtly moving and majestic.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Robert Kojder
