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SUMMERLAND – Review – We Are Movie Geeks

Review

SUMMERLAND – Review

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Lucas Bond as “Frank” and Gemma Arterton as “Alice” in Jessica Swale’s SUMMERLAND. Photo by Michael Wharley. Courtesy of IFC Films. An IFC Films Release

SUMMERLAND is a sweet drama set in the English countryside during WWII, about a reclusive, curmudgeonly writer who has her heart softened by a young refugee who has been sent to her Sussex village to escape the London Blitz. Gemma Arterton is delightful as the author but everything about writer/director Jessica Swale’s warm-hearted story is a bit too neat and perfect to be believable, much like the folk tales and myths about which the central character writes.

Playwright Jessica Swale makes her feature film debut with SUMMERLAND, which stars Gemma Arterton and Gugu Mbatha-Raw, who also appeared in Swale’s Olivier Award-winning play “Nell Gwynn.”

SUMMERLAND opens in a picturesque cottage in the English Sussex coastal countryside, with a disheveled older Alice Lamb (the always marvelous Penelope Wilton) grumbling over her typewriter,. When author Alice is interrupted by a pair of cute kids at the door, collecting for a fundraiser, she abruptly chases them away in classic curmudgeonly fashion. The film then flashes back, to the 1940s and a younger version of Alice (Gemma Arterton), also grumbling as she types, who also is interrupted by children at her door, pranksters this time, who she also chases away in a similar curmudgeonly fashion.

Young Alice Lamb is a writer of non-fiction about folk tales and myths, a solitary and independent woman who lives apart from the community of the nearby village and does not much care what anyone thinks of her. The local children think she is a witch and the local adults think she a pain, as well as someone who is unwilling to pitch in for the war effort along with everyone else. Alice particularly bedevils Mr. Sullivan (Tom Courtenay), the headmaster of the local school, who is surprisingly patient with her although he would rather just avoid Alice Lamb and her many complaints.

So it is pretty surprising when a woman who is a local leader in the village war effort turns up at Alice’s door, and informs her she is taking in a young refugee from London, a shy boy named Frank (Lucas Bond). Shocked, Alice protests, and tries to turn them away, saying there has been a mistake. But the boy has nowhere else to go and so must stay with Alice, at least until a new placement can be arranged – next week. Dismayed, she reluctantly lets him in.

Alice tries to do the minimum for the poor boy, showing him where to sleep and then going back to her writing with every intention of ignoring him. When he says he’s hungry, she gives him a bowl with potatoes and maybe some meat. “You don’t expect me to cook for you, do you?” she asks. Frank accepts the bowl with downcast eyes but no complaint. Eventually, she softens a bit and they do form a bond, of course. She begins to tell him about the myths and folk tales she writes about.

“Summerland” is what the local pagans called their heaven, she tells her young charge, a world that exists alongside ours but which you can only sometimes glimpse out of the corner of your eye. Alice’s scholarly work, her theses as she calls them, are based in part on her investigations into the physics and real-world basis for the folk tales that are the center of her work. She is working on an investigation of an optical illusion called Fata Morgana, a mirage that floats just above the horizon, and what she believes is a local manifestation of it, an image of a local castle that appears to be floating in the sky above the sea near the coast. She thinks she has found the perfect spot to see it, a cove on a nearby coastline. Frank, who is all boyish enthusiasm for adventure, begs to come along.

Frank adores his father, a pilot in the RAF, and Alice helps him build a model plane to fly on the coastal air currents. As the two grow close, tramping around the countryside or building toy planes, we learn that Alice was in love once, with another woman, a lively, adventurous lady of color named Vera (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), whom she met in college. In flashbacks to her college days, we are treated to gorgeous scenes filled with 1920s jazz-era music, glittery flapper fashions and lively parties. Although, at the time, being gay was illegal in Britain, the film makes to reference to that nor to the fact the her lover is black, also frowned on then. What separates Alice and Vera is her lover’s wish to have a child, so Vera leaves her to seek a man and marriage, something not possible for a gay couple then. Heartbroken, Alice plunges into her work and her hermit ways.

Meanwhile, Frank finds friendship at school with another displaced child, a lonely but imaginative girl named Edie (Dixie Egerickx), a friendship that is later challenged by the arrival of another refugee girl. There are adventures, strained relationships, secrets, and a tragic event, but the film ties everything up in a too-neat and tidy bow.

SUMMERLAND is a gorgeous looking film, filled with lovely period costumes and oh-so-perfect period details, set on a stunning, windswept English coast. It is hard not to get swept up in all the beauty but in a way, the film is just as much fairy tale as the folk stories Alice investigates. But the film’s fine performances go a long ways to mitigate that, and entertainingly draw us into this pleasant fantasy.

Gemma Arterton is particularly good, enlivening her scenes with Alice’s quirky personality and infectious sense of adventure,once she opens her heart to the young boy. Her scenes with young Lucas Bond as Frank are warm and filled with delightful boyish adventures. Tom Courtenay is a stand-out in his pivotal supporting role as the kindly school headmaster but, unfortunately, the talented Gugu Mbatha-Raw gets little chance to do more than look cute in her flashback sequences. Penelope Wilton is a delight in scenes that bracket the whole tale but they are brief.

The film ties up everything is a too-perfect bow, which means it is mostly put over by the fine performances. SUMMERLAND is a pleasant, sweet film but not a particularly believable one, making the story almost as much fantasy as the myths about which Alice writes.

RATING: 3 out of 4 stars