Dangerous Liaisons

COMING OF AGE IN MY SUMMER OF LOVE

Does the mismatched-summer-lovers movie count as a legitimate genre? One of the most affecting examples in a long time is the almost generically titled My Summer of Love, a film whose sultry eroticism is all the more remarkable for being set not on Corfu, or in some steamy American small town in the 50s, but rather in present-day Yorkshire, England, one of the grimmest corners of what is surely the least sultry, least erotic island in the world. The protagonists are Mona, a parentless teenager who lives with her born-again brother above the failing family pub, and Tamsin, a posh girl recently kicked out of school and knocking around her own family's fashionably down-at-the-heels mansion. The two meet cute and, given the class differences, perhaps too schematically, Tamsin riding a magnificent horse and Mona pedaling a motorless scooter. The "richie" (to use the John Hughes formulation) is played by Emily Blunt, all heavy-lidded eyes, cheekbones, and hauteur, the poor girl by Natalie Press, whose gift to her cinematographer is a face with the sly, just-hatched look of a young Sissy Spacek. As they fall into a halting, then passionate and believably clumsy affair, the actresses and their writer-director, Pawel Pawlikowski, capture a powerful sense of intoxication, of how, especially when you're young, losing yourself in someone else can also be a thrilling, deliciously charged kind of narcissism. Events, alas, play out predictably, pointing toward a betrayal that won't come as a surprise, though it remains no less devastating. The final shot of Press tromping down a road through the woods seems to be an homage, conscious or not, to the finale of Fellini's Nights of Cabiria, though with a nasty little twist. It's not quite uplift, but you won't soon forget Press's savage, hopeful face. (★★★½)

BRUCE HANDY