My Summer of Love

My Summer of Love
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Pawel Pawlikowski
Screenplay by	Pawel Pawlikowski Michael Wynne
Produced by	Chris Collins Tanya Seghatchian
Starring	Natalie Press Emily Blunt Paddy Considine
Edited by	David Charap
Music by	Alison Goldfrapp Will Gregory
Distributed by	ContentFilm
Release dates	21 August 2004 (2004-08-21) (EIFF) 5 November 2004 (2004-11-05) (United Kingdom)
Running time	86 minutes
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Budget	£1.7 million
Box office	£1,527,370.752 (US$2,766,976 in 2005 exchange rates)

My Summer of Love is a 2004 British drama film directed by Pawel Pawlikowski and co-written by Pawel Pawlikowski and Michael Wynne. Based on the novel of the same name by Helen Cross, the film explores the relationship between two young women from different classes and backgrounds. Working class Mona (Natalie Press), whose once-hotheaded brother (Paddy Considine) became a born again Christian in prison, meets upper middle class Tamsin (Emily Blunt) who suffers from a lack of love in her family. Filmed in West Yorkshire, the film went on to win a BAFTA.

Plot

The film commences on a sunny summer day in Yorkshire when Tamsin (Emily Blunt) meets Mona (Natalie Press). The former travels on horseback and chances upon Mona, who is resting in the grass. Opposites attract as the girls come from vastly different backgrounds and meet under very different circumstances. The former is from an upper-middle-class family and has recently been suspended from boarding school for being a bad influence. The nature of the 'influence' is never disclosed in the film. Mona, on the other hand, comes from a dysfunctional family, her recently-released prisoner brother, Phil (Paddy Considine), being her only living family member. Both of the girls seem to regard their lives as mundane. The new acquaintances set off together, one on horseback and the other on an engineless scooter.

When Mona arrives home, she finds her brother in the pub that was once run by their mother, pouring all of the alcohol into the sink. He has undergone an extreme religious transformation during his stint in prison and regards his activity as part of his preparation for a rally for Christian converts. That night, Mona meets her lover, Ricky. They have sex in his car, after which he breaks up with her. Mona angrily turns down Ricky's offer to drive her home. The next day, Mona arrives at Tamsin's in order to escape from the rally organised by her brother. The girls begin to bond as they spend the day drinking and smoking while talking about the problems they face in their lives. Their sharing brings to light several of Tamsin's family secrets, such as the fact that Tamsin's sister, Sadie, died as a result of anorexia nervosa.

The next day, Tamsin takes Mona to the place where Tamsin claims that her father is cheating on her mother with his secretary. Not only is Tamsin furious because she states that the secretary is blonde with big breasts, but also because the secretary is not very smart. Mona smashes a window of Tamsin's father's car. The girls then flee the scene, after which Mona agrees to spend the night in Tamsin's house. The next day Tamsin purchases an engine for Mona's scooter, after which they drive to a small river to swim. The girls share their first kiss while in the water, bikini-clad. The two return to Tasmin's house and Mona tries on dresses. When Mona tries on a long red dress, Tamsin states that it used to belong to her sister. She also tells Mona that she is beautiful. Mona dances while wearing one of the dresses in the yard while Tamsin plays a piece on her cello. Mona falls to the ground at the end of the song, and Tamsin kisses her passionately. Later that night, the two girls have sex for the first time in Tamsin's bed.

The next day, Phil finds the girls sunbathing, Tamsin topless. She does not cover herself and merely gazes at him as he invites the girls to his rally, in which he wants to erect a large cross on the hill next to their village. The girls go and join the born-again Christians on their way up the hill. Tamsin behaves as if immediately attracted to Phil during the course of the rally.

Mona and Tamsin explore Sadie's room and find a bag of magic mushrooms hidden inside a dollhouse. They take them together.

Later that day, feeling the effects of the mushrooms, Mona and Tamsin go to a dancehall where they behave intimately, disturbing the mostly older patrons and prompting the bouncer to kick them out. They then go back to the river where they first kissed and declare their eternal love to each other, solemnly swearing that they would kill each other if one should leave the other.

In the morning, Tamsin wakes by the river cold and shivering, and the girls leave to breakfast at Tamsin's house. Phil then arrives at Tamsin's house searching for Mona, whereupon Tamsin pretends to seduce him. He reacts and attempts to kiss her, but she laughs him off insultingly, sparking his fury and violence, as he grabs Tamsin by the neck in a fit of anger. He proceeds to lock Mona in her room, forbidding her to see Tamsin, where Mona draws a picture of Tamsin on the wall. Mona fakes suicide and Phil comes in to rescue her, whereupon Mona mocks Phil's belief in the devil and he beats her. Something in Phil snaps and he reverts to his violent behavior, kicking the born-again Christians out of the former pub, while Mona leaves the pub determined to start a new life with Tamsin.

However, she arrives at Tamsin's and discovers that Tamsin is to return to boarding school. Mona also belatedly uncovers Tamsin's deception - Tamsin's sister, Sadie, is in fact alive, and did not die of an eating disorder; this was just a lie fed to Mona as part of Tamsin's idea of summer fun. Mona, feeling disgusted and dejected by the fact that she's been used as summer theatrics, leaves for the girls' special spot at the river.

Tamsin finds her there and tells Mona that it should have been clear from the start that their relationship was doomed. In explaining why she lied about Sadie's "death", Tamsin tells Mona, "I'm a fantasist, for God's sake." They then slip into the water fully clothed again, re-enacting the earlier kissing scene. Mona uses this opportunity to fulfil her earlier oath, attempting to drown Tamsin, but ultimately leaving her alive, going off, instead, on her own.

Cast

• Natalie Press as Mona
• Emily Blunt as Tamsin
• Paddy Considine as Phil
• Dean Andrews as Ricky
• Michelle Byrne as Ricky's wife
• Paul-Anthony Barber as Tamsin's father
• Lynette Edwards as Tamsin's mother
• Kathryn Sumner as Sadie

Production

Casting the two lead actresses for the film proved difficult for Pawlikowski, and the overall casting procedure took about eight months. Pawlikowski searched in schools, universities, theatre groups and public castings. He discovered Nathalie Press first, but he still had to find her counterpart and so held some workshops together with Press and Considine. During this process, he finally found Emily Blunt, and felt her to be the ideal Tamsin. The chemistry between Press and Blunt was perfect right from the start and they first did a tryout with the "Piaf-dancing scene", which worked out perfectly. Emily Blunt is a competent cellist, and is listed in the credits as the performer of "The Swan" by Camille Saint-Saëns. Pawlikowski already knew Paddy Considine from their earlier collaboration Last Resort and cast him as Phil.

The film was shot during the span of five weeks after some intensive location-scouting by Pawlikowski. The script only contained 35 pages and was far from being complete. The whole script was a kind of work in progress: a lot of scenes and dialogue were improvised while shooting, with a lot of participation by the actors. The scene in which Mona draws a portrait of Tamsin on the wall of her room was entirely improvised - during Pawlikowski's travelling together with Press, he discovered that she used to do a lot of drawing while she was thinking, so he decided to integrate it into the movie and made a scene out of it. The whole shoot was done on location in Todmorden during the hottest summer Yorkshire had seen in 50 years.

The score of the film was written by Goldfrapp and the movie theme is a variation of the Goldfrapp song "Lovely Head", which was the first song of their 2000 album Felt Mountain.

The performances of the leading actors have been acclaimed, with trophies from the Evening Standard British Film Awards and the London Critics Circle Film Awards. Also, Pawlikowski's unconventional style of directing has been rewarded with a BAFTA for Best British Film and the Michael Powell award for Best British Film at the Edinburgh Film Festival (where the film had its world premiere in 2004), along with many nominations across the British Independent Film Awards and the European Film Awards.

Both Natalie and Emily were extremely different and very original, which is a rare thing nowadays. They avoid the obvious, and are capable of playing complex and conflicting attitudes. Above all, they had energy, which is key for a movie. When I brought them together for a workshop, I could see them feeding off of each other well, and I knew that this was going to work.

— Pawel Pawlikowski, [1]

Pawel has a European sensibility. Whilst he's working with British subject and landscapes, he is much more interested in the essence of things- rather than the usual obsession with class and surface of contemporary life. He has mixture of lyricism and humor and a love of paradox and mystery which set him apart from the rest of British filmmaking, particularly the social realist tradition.

— Tanya Seghatchian, [2]

The novel with the same title My Summer of Love by Helen Cross only served as a blueprint for the film: Whereas the novel pays a lot of attention to the social background of England in the 1980s, Pawlikowski reduced the book to its essentials and focused on the relationship between the girls. Most of the characters in the novel were left out in the film and the character Phil was invented and added by Pawlikowski, who had previously directed a documentary on born-again Christians in Yorkshire. In many interviews Pawlikowski said that he was not interested in portraying typical teenage life in England, but he wanted to give the movie a certain "timeless feeling".

[...]If you wanted to make a film about British teenagers it would be... well, it wouldn't interest me, let's put it like that. They'd be listening to music I hate, watching TV all the time, and talking about Big Brother. I needed to remove it, to get to the essence of adolescence without the paraphernalia of today. In a way I am arrested in my adolescent emotions, like most of us I think are, so [the film is] very personal, funnily enough, despite it being about two girls. I identify with Mona to an unhealthy degree [laughs], so the main thing was to make these teenagers the sort of teenagers I could relate to myself, slightly more timeless and removed from now.

— Pawel Pawlikowski,

Release

My Summer of Love was first screened at the Edinburgh Film Festival, being released across the UK on 5 November 2004. In the US, the film was initially screened at the Seattle International Film Festival on 20 May 2005, being eventually given a limited released across the US on 17 June 2005.

Box office

In the US, the film grossed $90,000 on its opening weekend, in 17 theaters; and went on to be released across 63 theaters, grossing a total $1,000,915 in the 8 weeks of its release. Worldwide, it grossed an additional $1,766,061, for a lifetime gross of $2,766,976.

Critical reception

The film was met with almost universal acclaim, as indicated by a weighted average score of 82 out of 100 from Metacritic. It currently holds a 'Fresh' rating of 90% based on 87 reviews at Rotten Tomatoes. According to the site's consensus, "My Summer of Love is a moody, bittersweet love story featuring outstanding performances from the leads."

Roger Ebert of Chicago Sun-Times, who gave it 3/4 stars, described it as 'a movie that is more about being an age, than coming-of-age', while A.O. Scott of The New York Times termed it 'a triumph of mood and implication', and James Berardinelli of ReelViews, called it a 'gem' lost in the 'hype' of Hollywood blockbusters.

Not all criticism was positive, however, with Ty Burr of The Boston Globe, calling it 'a conceit on a number of levels', and described it as 'confused between an 'artistic' lesbian movie and Heavenly Creatures', which he described as 'superior', while Steve Schneider of Orlando Weekly called it 'slight and predictable at its core'; whereas, the unfavorable comparison to Heavenly Creatures was echoed by Robin Clifford of Reeling Reviews.

Awards and nominations

My Summer of Love was nominated for the British Independent Film Award at the 2004 British Independent Film Awards, the Alexander Korda Award for Best British Film at the 2005 BAFTAs, the Best New British Feature award at the 2004 Edinburgh Film Festival, the European Film Award at the 2005 European Film Awards, the ALFS award at the 2005 London Critics Circle Film Awards, and the 2005 Directors Guild Of Great Britain Awards. Out of these it won the Alexander Korda Award for Best British Film at the BAFTAs, the Directors Guild Of Great Britain Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in British Film, the Best New British Feature at the Edinburgh Film Festival, and the ALFS award at the London Critics Circle Film Awards.

See also

• List of lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender-related films by storyline
• New Queer Cinema

External links

• Official website
• My Summer of Love at IMDb
• My Summer of Love at Box Office Mojo
• My Summer of Love at Metacritic
• My Summer of Love at Rotten Tomatoes