‘The Summer Book’: London Review

Dir: Charlie McDowell. Finland/UK 2024. 90mins

The difference of traditional literature centred round youngsters could be a fraught affair. There’s a magic to being younger that phrases convey finest, and typically it’s finest to go away it that method. The Summer season Guide is an bold translation of a highly-regarded, slim memoir/novel by Finnish writer and Moomins creator Tove Jansson that impressionistically and naturalistically talks a few younger lady and her grandmother over the course of a summer season on an island within the Finnish archipelago (or maybe a number of summers; it’s informed in 22 small incidents). Though there’s nothing about Charlie McDowell’s interpretation that doesn’t purpose for related excellence, the very act of embodying the e-book lessens its magic.

The movie’s restfulness finally turns into one thing extra soporific

Glenn Shut, as Grandmother, banishes the recollections of her final matriarch in Hillbilly Elegy, though it’s one other position for the 77 year-old actor which leans closely on hair and make-up and an accent, this time Finnish, in addition to a strolling stick. Emily Matthews, as 9 year-old Sophia, acquits herself effectively, and Norwegian actor Anders Danielson Lie is extra current than his character was within the e-book, taking part in the illustrator Father whose drawings assist flesh out the visuals. The situation work is extra genuine than the casting, painstakingly recreating Jansson’s personal cottage and the wonder that surrounds it. This restful meditation on the pure world can reply far too closely although on Hania Rori’s piano-based rating for momentum.

Capturing the subtext of youngsters’s literature for movie is even more durable when the works are nostalgic and small in scope, like current diversifications of The Secret Backyard or Swallows And Amazons. Even much less occurs in The Summer season Guide. Sophia, her Father and Grandmother arrive on the island shortly after the dying of her mom. It’s not clear during which timeframe that The Summer season Guide is ready, as a result of the realm is so distant, however clothes and hair and the gramophone would counsel it’s contemporaneous to Janssen’s personal time there as a toddler within the Twenties (and for the remainder of her life). 

Grandmother has been coming right here for 47 years and it’s clear her time is restricted; Sophia is at first of her life. Collectively, they forge an existence on the island, studying about one another’s wants – Grandmother typically tries to flee Sophie’s fixed babble by smoking a solitary cigarette – jostling with boredom and discovering nature. They make a day journey to a neighbouring island; they undertake a cat. Sophie and her father plant a Poplar tree and a small flower backyard to recollect her mom. Finally there’s a storm, which provokes some kind of climax. Author Robert Jones has stripped the slim novel even additional by dishing out with one visiting character and lessening the presence of one other. Thus the movie depends completely on the great thing about nature, and Shut’s stout efficiency. Finally, although, the movie’s restfulness turns into one thing extra soporific.

It’s laborious to inform whether or not The Summer season Guide tacks so strongly in direction of Shut’s character due to the energy of such a revered actress, or if the movie would naturally have bent that method when the characters got here to life. Actually, within the e-book it’s extra of a relationship, however the movie turns into centered on Grandmother’s mortality in a method that does threaten to overwhelm the humorous character of the kid and the closely-observed great thing about this household’s circumstances. It will likely be fascinating to see how it’s obtained in its co-production house of Finland, the place the writer and illustrator Jansson is revered (and was the topic of a 2020 biopic Tove).

To learn concerning the Japanese Gulf of Finland is one factor, however to see it depicted right here is all the time fantastic. McDowell, who beforehand directed The Discovery, works with DoP Sturla Brandth Grøvlen once more to current a movie during which nature is emphasised, however cinematography does its personal quiet work. The place is gorgeous as a result of it merely is, not simply because it’s lit to look that method.  That’s the chief takeaway from The Summer season Guide: an actual place in time, and an interplay and respect between it and its inhabitants. That alone will draw older-skewing audiences lengthy after the movie has settled into its personal life.