A Beautiful Summer (2019)

Remember the final scene of Go Toto! (FID 2017) : Madelene disappears, setting off to join the boar piglet she rescued and raised in her house in Vattetot. She makes a surreptitious reappearance at the start of A Beautiful Summer dropping Flora off at her neighbour Simon’s house. Audiences familiar with Creton’s work will recognise the filmmaker’s home and garden that, for a summer, have become the stage and set for a new transfiguration of life into comedy. With Flora, youth surges into the house, breathing its formidable energy into the film with a pop music bloom echoed by tracks from The Limiñanas. And there’s the youth of Ahmed and Mohammed, two young migrants washed up in Normandy, to whom Simon and Robert offer a roof, and share their life with. The “children’s” sunny, sensual insouciance and the soundtrack are in contrast to the slower, more serious and challenging mood of the adults. Sophie staves off her loneliness by observing Simon and Robert as they expose their relationship to the risk of Nessim, the African lover who’s survived Calais and the demolition of ‘The Jungle’.