At roughly the two-thirds mark of Charlie McDowell’s ultra gentle, nature-mediated fourth feature “The Summer Book,” one of the main characters, nine-year-old Sophia (newcomer Emily Matthews), prays as her father (Anders Danielsen Lie) steers her and her octogenarian grandmother (Glenn Close) on a motor boat in the open waters of the Gulf of Finland. Sophia pleads, “Dear God, I’m bored as beef. Please let something happen. A storm! Anything!”
Curiously, audiences might be making the same request, as there is precious little plot or overt characterization in this tepid, languorous adaptation of beloved Finnish author Tove Jansson’s classic 1972 novel of the same name. This isn’t to say that the film lacks in hardy character or gorgeous idyllic cinematography. In fact, a grounded meditative island beauty — lent by silken picturization of reeds, moss, rocks, and dappled sunlight on ripples of ocean, as well as by a soundscape...
Curiously, audiences might be making the same request, as there is precious little plot or overt characterization in this tepid, languorous adaptation of beloved Finnish author Tove Jansson’s classic 1972 novel of the same name. This isn’t to say that the film lacks in hardy character or gorgeous idyllic cinematography. In fact, a grounded meditative island beauty — lent by silken picturization of reeds, moss, rocks, and dappled sunlight on ripples of ocean, as well as by a soundscape...
- 10/27/2024
- by Ritesh Mehta
- Indiewire
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