My Summer of Love

British film My Summer Of Love has been popular on the international film festival circuit and it was also the Opening Night movie at the recent Sydney Film International Festival. The teen drama is the latest film by Polish-born director Pawel Pawlikowski (Last Resort). My Summer Of Love is set in country Yorkshire.

Natalie Press plays teenager Mona, a girl from the school of hard knocks. She?s bored and living with her born again Christian brother Phil, great English actor Paddy Considine. Ex-con Phil has turned their late parents pub into a church, much to Mona?s chagrin. Eventually her path crosses with Tamsin\'s (Emily Blunt) a girl sophisticated beyond her years and in town for the summer. Socially they are chalk and cheese but as the saying goes, opposites attract. Consumed by each other they form a raging friendship and then fall in love.

This is a breathtaking film about a teenage crush, that combines a documentary realism style with ethereal teen fantasy. Clearly it is also an opportunity for director Pawlikowski to reveal his own mighty crush on filmmaking. It is a confident film and an atmospheric adaptation of Helen Cross\'s 2001 novel, which absolutley reveres the medium. The cinematography is warm and intoxicating, like The Virgin Suicides - the performances by the three leads are awesome, Press in particular tears up the screen like a young Tilda Swinton, and the low-key, character-driven story, while it does becomes shocking towards the end, never lapses into hysterical. My Summer Of Love is also an affectionate homage to the British kitchen sink dramas of the 1960s, where life and film intertwined so completely.