Romancefest 2015: My Summer of Love

Time for another thriller, this time MY SUMMER OF LOVE, a 2004 flick from the UK about a working class teen (Natalie Press) who becomes close friends, and later lovers, with a bored and lonely rich girl (Emily Blunt).

The working class girl has lost her parents and lives with her brother (Paddy Considine) in what used to be the family pub. Brother has had a religious awakening and has converted the pub into a meeting place for his followers. He also takes to building a giant iron cross in his spare time, in hopes of planting it on the hillside overlooking the small village they live in, which is full of sin, according to him.

The rich girl has a dad who's cheating on her mom (Paul-Anthony Barber), a mom who's an alcoholic (Lynette Edwards) and a sister who has died young after suffering from anorexia (Kathryn Sumner). She also has a big estate that's always empty, except for her. She's recently been kicked out of school and has nothing to do with her spare time.

The two girls spend the entire summer together and get intensely close in an extremely short amount of time, swearing their allegiance to each other by saying super dramatic things like, "If you ever leave me I'll kill you."

Of course things are not as simple as all of this and not everything is as it seems. I don't want to give a couple surprises towards the end of the film away, so I'll concentrate more on what a good movie this is – it manages to be a slice of life and a thriller, all at the same time, creating suspense and mystery without resorting to plot contrivances. It's a nice trick to have three dimensional characters and a twisty plot at the same time and not sacrifice either.

The two leads are great, especially Natalie Press, who is so authentic you feel like she's just playing herself. Emily Blunt has of course gone on to become a big star, and she has clearly had that presence since day one, which makes her the perfect choice to play a manipulative seductress.