Madeleine Davies

Archive for February, 2014|Monthly archive page

My Summer of Love: film review

In Uncategorized on February 8, 2014 at 3:49 pm

The scenes depicting charismatic Christianity in My Summer of Love are clearly the work of someone who’s been up close to the real thing. Hands are outstretched, things are lifted up in prayer, while fire is beseeched to come down. The language, which I often think must sound quite suggestive to some ears, is spot-on: “More passion, Lord”. The director, Pawel Pawlikowski had previously directed a documentary about born-again Christians in the North (Lucifer over Lancashire) and it is perhaps this that inspired him to make the brother in this story a member of this tribe (he isn’t in the novel on which it is based).

The film is primarily about the heady relationship between two teenage girls, one, Mona, scribbling on the woodchip that papers her room above The Swan, the other, Tamsin, wringing Saint-Saëns ode to this creature out of her cello. But the film is more interesting for the addition of Mona’s brother, Phil, who has recently converted to Christianity.

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