La belle saison

An enjoyable film, with some great performances; but less travelled country roads should be rather more bumpy.

While a far from novel story, the three female leads (Izïa Higelin, Cécile de France and Noémie Lvovsky) give pitch perfect performances.

Where this film falls down is in giving the two lovers, far too smooth a ride. If you're fighting for freedom, surely the establishment would offer far more resistance? Here, the revolutionaries hardly seem to experience any push-back. There's one bump in the road, but that's really it.

This story of a relationship between a farmer's daughter and the woman she meets in Paris is effective in some ways. Set in the early 70s in the first flush of modern feminism, the plot is pretty simple and the issue simpler - will they stay together against the pressures of rural society? Izia Hegelin makes an effective and believable daughter of the soil, struggling to reconcile her feelings and her ties to her land and family; in an underwritten role as her lover, Cecile de France is less effective but does her best. Some good scenes showing the sometimes silly behaviour of activists and their disconnect from real life. The ending seemed slightly unlikely to me in some ways. There are sex scenes but they are neither very erotic nor graphic. So - worth seeing, but only a moderately good film.

It's 1971 France. Delphine Benchiessa (Izïa Higelin) works at her family's rural farm. Her father berates her for being too slow to find a man. Unbeknownst to him, she's a lesbian. Her girlfriend surprises her by marrying a local boy. In Paris, she gets caught up with a group of militant feminists. She falls for their leader Carole (Cécile de France). After her father suffers a stroke, Delphine is forced to go home and take care of the farm.

It's another version of the tragic lesbian love story. I do wonder if 1971 France is a little too late to have this story. Usually, it's Victorian ladies on a gravel beach trying to discover lesbianism. In reality, rural conservatism and family dynamics do account for it. These ladies are not ignorant of the world. The 70's is not all disco and gay. It's still a fight for rights and acceptance. The danger isn't as high, and the story becomes smaller. Delphine could always run off and abandon the farm. It's not like society prevents her from getting a job in Paris. The issue becomes more internal and personal. It's a relationship movie.

I didn't much care for the first half of 'Summertime': a posse of beautiful, self-confident and middle-class young feminists assert their right to "to as they please" in the Paris of the 1970s. What is absent from the portrayal is any sense of the personal insecurity that cripples most of us; these sisters, it seems, can quite literally do anything for themselves. The film becomes more nuanced when it follows two of its protagonists (a lesbian couple) back to the farm in the country where one of them (Delphine) grew up, and whence she has now been summoned owing to the illness of her father. There's still some idealisation here: the family own their farm and live a simple peasant life. But the conflict between Delphine's familial and spatial sense of identity, and the new relationship she has forged in the city, is nicely portrayed, as is the guarded hostility of her mother and her local acquaintances to the choices she has made in her new life. Overall, it's not nearly as strong as 'Blue is the Warmest Colour', but it grew on me as I watched it.

This is a sensitive portrayal of two women from different backgrounds in conservative, rural France. Delphine, a country girl in Paris is introduced to feminism at a time (1971) shortly after the student riots in Paris, the bra-burning feminism of late 60s USA, and the teen-led cultural revolution in music, art and fashion. Paris was a world away from her farm in the Limousin. It is a film about feminism and lesbianism with strong female leads directed by an experienced female director who was, herself, a teenager at the time the film was set. As such it is authentic and tender, not titillating. It is a film about relationships, between Delphine and her mother, her Parisian girlfriend, the boy she is expected to marry and above all the conflict between the city and the country.

It is a film that could only be made in Europe and only set in the 70s and was justifiably nominated for a Lumiere, France's equivalent to the Golden Globes. Jellybeansucker should stick to sucking jelly beans and watching simplistic action movies. This is for those who prefer content to pace.