My Summer of Love

There are movies where no matter how well things are going, you know in your heart it's going to end badly. You just don't know how it'll end badly or who is going to get the shaft. This is one of those movies.

This is the story of two girls in mid-late adolescence (I'd say they're about seventeen). Mona (Nathalie Press) has a lower class heritage, and is attractive in a redheaded freckly way. Her only family is her older brother, Phil (Paddy Considine of In America), an ex-con who has found Jesus and turned the family's property, a pub downstairs and apartment upstairs into a prayer center.

Mona feels as if she has lost her brother and that she now has no family.

Out riding her bike one day, she meets Tamsin (Emily Blunt). Tamsin is extremely beautiful, almost regal and comes from a wealthy family that lives in a manor house. The girls form an "opposites attract" kind of bond, that eventually takes on lesbian overtones.

The well-educated Tamsin is the brains of their relationship and Mona is the body. For example, when Tamsin emotionally complains about her father having a mistress, it is Mona who picks up a lawn troll and breaks a window of his car.

You see a lot of these girls in this movie. I'm not just referring to screen time, I'm referring to skin time. There are several scenes involving partial or full nudity, and while it will probably strike you at first that Tamsin has the best body, there is a scene where Mona is dancing in nothing but a bra and undies that shows she really does not take a back seat in the body department. The girls turn out to be very well matched in that regard.

Well, as their lesbianism grows, we begin to realize that we are actually watching a romance, yes, but a tragic romance. Both girls are reckless in the euphoria of their mad passion for each other, and at one point both vow to kill the other should she ever leave.

At the same time, Mona's brother is observing his sister moving on what he sees as a road to perdition, and intensifies his attempts to get her to convert to his brand of Christianity. Meanwhile, Tamsin, a very analytical and intellectually aware girl, wants to understand Phil better. But what for?

The movie takes a turn when Tamsin gets herself alone with Phil and what happens changes our perception of the both of them.

This is a movie about love, betrayal, cruelty, and the evil that can lurk in the hearts of even beautiful girls.

If I were you, I'd get out and see this movie soon. It probably won't play for very long.