One Deadly Summer

Isabelle Adjani gives a brilliant, instinctive performance (and she also has several showstopping nude scenes, I might add) as an animalistic, untamed young sexpot who seeks vengeance on the three men that raped her mother 20 years ago. In the first few minutes, the film seems a bit confusing and pointless, but gradually reveals itself to be a multi-layered story with quite a few twists along the way. "One Deadly Summer" deserves more attention (but is difficult to find). (***)

L'Ete Meurtrier is a very complex, cleverly constructed film, well acted, written and directed. For me, one of the cleverest features is the fact that a number of characters take their turn at narration.

Although Adjani puts in a very good performance, in my opinion the best performance is by Suzanne Flon, who plays the pivotal role of Cognata.

The flashback scenes are not wholly convincing for me - they do not even begin to suggest that the action is taking place twenty years previously.

Perhaps my favourite scene, is the one where Eliane sits outside her father's locked door and cries "tu est mon pere!" - this scene is well acted by Adjani - the viewer can almost feel her anguish.

Overall, an excellent film which can be watched over and over again. In fact, one needs to watch it a few times to appreciate all the twists and turns in the plot.

Newcomer to the village, Eilane, (Isabelle Adjani), is certainly a stunner and soon she's driving all the boys wild but it's mechanic and fireman 'Pin-Pon', (Alain Souchon), who woos her and wins her even though on their first date he sees a side to her that would have most men fleeing to the hills. Eilane may indeed be gorgeous but she's also clearly psychotic or worse. Jean Becker's "One Deadly Summer" is just yet another in a long line of superb French thrillers in which bad things take place in bright sunlight and people seem to have an ulterior motive for everything while Adjani joins a long list of very fatal femmes. She's terrific as usual but then so is everyone else in a movie that sets out its stall early on and then proceeds to give to the cold creeps for the next two hours. If you wished you could call it Chabrolian but I think this is a darker film than even Chabrol might have given us. Well worth seeking out.

More an Intelligent drama, with some violent overtones more than the "thriller" it's packaged as. This has more in common with "Rashomon" than with the latest slick action movie out of Hollywood.

Isabelle Adjani plays a young woman unhinged by the knowledge of her mother's brutal rape by 3 men years earlier, and she has built her life around seeking revenge. The film's most striking aspect is the use of multiple switching narrators, so we see the tale unfold from several points of view.

Adjani, as always, has a tremendous emotional rawness, but for me the performance (and the writing) wears its heart a little too much on it's sleeve. I wish she wasn't so clearly crazy much of the time. Or that more people seemed to notice just how blatantly manipulative her behavior is.

The pace is very slow, which worked a lot of the time, but I did find myself frustrated at moments.

But all that said, this is an interesting experiment in telling a complex story, with strong performances all around. And if it occasionally falls into melodrama, it also is full of moments that are disturbing, moving and shocking.

I don't know how I've managed to not see this film till now, except I guess, for some reason it was only available for a short time. But it is a stunner, all bright, golden and light, at first, but rapidly the evidence of some dark undertow becomes evident. Alain Souchon seems a barely adequate pairing for Isabelle Adjani but it all gradually comes together. Adjani is skimpily dressed, partly undressed or completely nude for the entire picture and so hypnotises that we are distracted and unable to foresee what will be the doom laden, final denouement. I cannot think of another film where the leading lady looks so sensational from every angle and throughout an entire movie as Adjani does in this. Never a dull moment, as they say, and more than that, little is what it seems at first and those we think have a handle on things maybe don't. There is an intimate moment between Adjani's character and her mother that astonished and baffled me that does resonate as the film builds to its explosive ending.