by Annette Basile
Worth: $13.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Yile Yara Vianello, Deva Cassel, Nicolas Maupas, , Alessandro Piavani, Adrien Dewitte
Intro:
… sensual, character-driven …
Set in pre-war Turin, The Beautiful Summer has the impeccable period detail we’ve come to expect, and the 1930s atmosphere is palpable. But the casting doesn’t quite work, and its first half moves at a glacial pace. At roughly the halfway mark, the narrative choices start to make some sense – it was a long but possibly necessary set-up for these characters, adding layers to the soapy dynamics. When the relationships reach a certain threshold, they also become far more interesting.
Seventeen-year-old Ginia (Yile Yara Vianello, La Chimera) and her older brother Severino (Nicolas Maupas) move from the countryside to Turin, where Ginia has a job as a seamstress at a fashion house. She’s talented and making inroads at work, chosen to design a wedding dress for a prized client. But this is a coming-of-age/sexual awakening tale, and Ginia’s about to find out how messy relationships can affect work and everything else.
Her awakening comes via the glamorous Amelia (model Deva Cassel in her debut), who poses naked for painters. Ginia’s clearly fascinated by her, but it’s unclear for a while whether Ginia wants her or just wants to be her. One night, Amelia takes Ginia to an outdoor gathering of Bohemian types. She meets artist Rodrigues (Adrien Dewitte), who laughs at her when she tells him what she does for a living. She’s a shy, humble country girl, neither charmless nor charismatic. It’s hard to imagine that she would be allowed into their circle. But these men use women and are comfortable about it. Ginia is just another one to use.
She’s a virgin (even her name is either an abbreviation of, or derived from, ‘Virginia’), but she wants to emulate Amelia, posing for painters – she wants them to show her who she is. Ginia soon becomes involved with the artist Guido (Alessandro Piavani), who shares run-down digs with Rodrigues.
Surprisingly, the film makes almost nothing of the era’s politics, it’s merely a backdrop – but maybe that’s the point. Fascism is on the march and these characters don’t notice or care. When Ginia hears political talk floating through her window, she literally shuts it out. She has her own dramas.
Based on the 1949 novel by Cesare Pavese, co-writer/director Laura Luchetti has succeeded in creating a sensual, character-driven drama – a scene where Ginia buries herself in autumn leaves is beautiful. But Luchetti has sacrificed the storytelling.
Vianello is good as Ginia but there’s a lack of subtlety, and the chemistry between her and Cassel isn’t really there. Yet somehow, it all adds up to a decent, if not remarkable film, with a few impressive visual moments, such as those autumn leaves, and Ginia walking through a snowy Turin. The film also says something about entangled relationships, but it does so without getting you to think or feel anything meaningful.
