My Summer of Love
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| My Summer of Love | |
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 A film poster for My Summer of Love |
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| Directed by | Pawel Pawlikowski |
| Produced by | Chris Auty Chris Collins Emma Hayter Tanya Seghatchian David M. Thompson |
| Written by | Helen Cross (novel) Pawel Pawlikowski Michael Wynne |
| Starring | Natalie Press Emily Blunt Paddy Considine |
| Distributed by | ContentFilm (UK) Focus Features (USA) |
| Release date(s) | October 22, 2004 (London) |
| Running time | 86 min. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | ~£1,700,000 |
| IMDb profile | |
My Summer of Love (2004) is a British film written and directed by Pawel Pawlikowski. Based on a novel by Helen Cross, the film explores the relationship between two young women from different classes and backgrounds. Working class Mona (Press), whose once-hotheaded brother (Considine) became a born again Christian in prison, meets upper middle class Tamsin (Blunt) who suffers from a lack of love in her family. Filmed in West-Yorkshire, the film went on to win a BAFTA.
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[edit] Plot
In Yorkshire, two girls meet for the first time when Tamsin (Emily Blunt), a manipulative, rich girl suffering from parental neglect, rides into a field on horseback and chances upon Mona (Natalie Press), a simple working-class girl, while the latter 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 a posh, upper-middle-class family and is under suspension from boarding school for being a bad influence, while the latter, bored with her mundane life, comes from a dysfunctional family, her recently-released prisoner brother, Phil (Paddy Considine), being her only living family member. The new acquaintances set off together, one on horseback and the other on a sputtering scooter.
When Mona arrives home, she finds her brother, in the pub that was once run by their mother, removing all the alcohol from the pub. He has undergone an extreme religious transformation during his stint in prison and this is part of his preparation for a rally for Christian converts. Mona meets her lover that night, whereupon they have sex in his car, right before he breaks up with her. A disgusted Mona is then left alone in the parking lot. 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 due to anorexia, as well as her father's extramarital affair.
The next day, Tamsin takes Mona to the place where her father is cheating on her mother with his secretary. They smash a window of his car and run away, after which Mona agrees to spend the night in Tamsin's house, as Tamsin's parents are not at home. The next day begins with Tamsin purchasing 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 go back to Tasmin's house and Mona tries on dresses, and later dances in one of them out in the yard as Tasmin plays a song on her cello. Mona falls to the ground at the end of the song, and Tasmin kisses her passionatley, resulting in the two girls having sex for the first time, later that night, 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.
Later that day, 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 with a cold, 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 forcibly ground Mona, forbidding her to see Tamsin. Mona refuses to give in to his demands, and something in Phil snaps when he finally comes to see the loyalty Mona has towards Tamsin. He then kicks 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, had never died or suffered from anorexia, as 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. They then slip into the water fully clothed again, re-enacting the earlier kissing scene. Mona uses this opportunity to fulfill her earlier oath, attempting to kill Tamsin, but ultimately leaving her alive, going off, instead, on her own.
[edit] 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
[edit] About the film
When Pawlikowski started to work on the film it took him quite some time to cast the two lead actresses. The overall casting procedure took about 8 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. Pawlikowski already knew Paddy Considine, a well known British actor, from their earlier collaboration, Last Resort, and had 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. (A perfect example for this kind of working method is the scene where Mona draws a portrait of Tamsin on the wall of her room. 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 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.
- Pawel Pawlikowski:[1]
| “ | 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. | ” |
- Tanya Seghatchian (producer):[2]
| “ | 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. | ” |
The novel with the same title My Summer of Love by Helen Cross only served as some kind of blueprint for the film. Whereas the novel pays a lot of attention to the social background of England in the 1980s (where it is set), 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. 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".
- Pawel Pawlikowski:
| “ | [...]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. | ” |
[edit] Memorable quotes
In Tamsin's mansion's garden Mona and Tamsin sit on a bench and talk about their future lives:
- Tamsin: "So what are you gonna do with your life?"
- Mona: "I'm gonna be a lawyer...I'm gonna get a job in an abattoir, work really hard, get a boyfriend who's like — a bastard, and churn out all these kids right, with mental problems and then...I'm gonna wait for menopause,...or cancer."
[edit] Trivia
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Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines. The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones. |
- 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.
- Earlier in his career, Pawel Pawlikowski did a documentary on born-again Christians in Yorkshire. The experiences he made back then influenced the character Phil.
- Emily Blunt is listed in the credits as the performer of "The Swan" by Camille Saint-Saëns. She plays the cello in real life.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
| Preceded by Touching the Void |
Alexanda Korda Award for Best British Film 2004 |
Succeeded by Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit |
