Craving passion

[chani]

You probably haven't heard of that English flick.

My Summer of Love is a "small movie", not a money making machine, but it's charming and the acting is full of grace. It's a love story but it is also a film about emptiness, about people craving passion and needing to fill their lives, and about fantasy and reality and maybe about small towns in Yorkshire.

Mona is a teenager who lives in a pub, with her older brother...except that this familial pub is no longer a pub since Phil who used to be a bad boy and went to jail...found God and turned the place into a Prayer House. Mona adored her brother and because of him she got re-named...her real name being Lisa. He found funny to call her Mona, after Vinci's painting, because she wasn't a smiling person when she was a child. But that Phil is gone, and when he wants to baptize her once more, she rejects him and his newly found faith.

At the beginning of the film she met another girl, named Tasmin who's spending the Summer there. Tasmin belongs to a higher social class, and when they met, symbolically she's above Mona, on her horse while the other teen is lying in a field. Despite their differences we can feel the connection between them from that first scene. Friendship ensues leading to romance.Both are bored and lonely, Mona because her brother is busy with God, Tamsin because her parents are oblivious and leave her in the big mansion. One is dark (Tamsin), the other is a redhead, one seems very confident, the other feels lost and unloved (fatherless, an orphan since her mother's death, abandoned by a beloved brother, shagged-and-left by a married lover), one is a rich girl, the other is not, one is educated and a true showoff, the other knows little...but at the end of the day they are quite close, temporarily at least. As the film advances, they start looking alike with their loose hair and large hoop earrings, even the structure of their face and their figure are similar although the brunette is taller. And when Tasmin makes Mona wear her clothes, isn't she making out a double of herself (or of her sister)? Does she turn Mona into her doll? There's obviously a mirror play going on. I wonder to what extent it isn't the core of any homosexual affair btw...to be safe with someone like you whereas the other sex is seen as an alien thus frightening.

We are kind of led to think that Tamsin is stronger and "on the top" in that relationship, playing with innocent and naive Mona as she plays of her cello but she's also very emotive and fascinated by the lower class teen. Tamsin is the seductress in the movie (she even managed to seduce Phil) for sure, but she's mostly all talk while Mona is on the earth (once again their first meeting gave the clue of the relationship),  and probably more experienced. During sex, Mona is clearly on the top even though Tamsin initiated the first kiss. Mona wants to believe in love, she wants to be loved and to lose herself in that passion, but she basically knows what reality is. This is why she keeps pointing out the others' fantasy, calling her brother a faker, guessing that all the fools for God that surround him have lost their mind.

When Phil and his followers go to put a huge cross he made on the top of the hill (for God to claim back the valley!), both girls are there, but Mona is the only one remaining an outsider. Tamsin is obviously intrigued by Phil's charisma, by the whole fantasy those religious people are craving. Despite all she says, she actually understands them...she gets the thrill of that ceremony.

She understands because she has nothing to be filled with but that fantasy she creates around Mona and herself, using alcohol, music, magic mushrooms, lies, esotericism...In that small town, that dead-and-alive hole, they all crave passion (a very christian notion btw), they all want to let go, to be "emportés par la foule" as Edith Piaf sings. As Mona tells her girlfriend while watching the town, Tamsin changed it, it doesn't look like her old home anymore, she can claim it back as if Tamsin was Mona's salvation. Later on the same location, above the town, Phil drives in the huge cross of his own salvation.

Tamsin recognized herself in Phil. Did she really love Mona? What does love mean after all? I think those girls were in love like Phil and his fellows were in God.

I won't tell you the end of the movie though...but there's deception, disappointment and maybe a few lessons learnt the hard way for everybody.

 

But as Nietzche said, what doesn't kill us makes us stronger!

Comments

[so-sharlemaine.livejournal.com]

I guess Mississippi must have missed out on that one as well. They're finally turning the corner on the civil rights issues, but sex stuff is still on the backburner here. LoL! Give 'em time. The old ones are dying out, and there's more like me coming up! We'll be the majority soon.

(I guess that was a little mean, wasn't it ;-)

Anyway, If you come back to the states, you must let me know. We'll go down to the "Big Easy." Things are so different there. Hard to believe it's the same country. Mardi Gras is pretty cool.

I'll look up your review. I might can find the film somewhere over here.

[frenchani.livejournal.com]

Of course I meant NO like in New Orlean not NY!

I'm sure you and I could have fun over there indeed ;- )

I'm not planning to go the States for a while. Last year they arrested me at Detroit and I had to come out about my Buffy secret: just try to picture me in the airport's restricted area, questioned by two cops during, one nice and one bad of course, in English...I was mad and nervous because tired after 9 hours spent on an airplane, and sure I would be going to miss my flight to Las Vegas where my friends were waiting for me, and I had to tell the cops that I was visiting a couple of people I had only met on a Buffy The Vampires Slayer board! They thought I was crazy (they rang my friend in Vegas and questioned her too )but they let me in eventually...not a terrorist material I guess.

That was very unpleasant.

[frenchani.livejournal.com]

weird some words I typed vanished....

Should read "at Detroit airport" and "during a whole hour"

sowwy

[so-sharlemaine.livejournal.com]

That word disappearing thing happens to my comments a lot! It makes me feel like I'm stupid or something. I think LJ just short circuits sometimes.

I cannot believe that you got arrested at the Detroit airport. I am so sorry for that. How embarrassing for us Americans. And you told them about the Buffy fandom!!! Now that's hilarious. I'm sure I would have been a real cynical bitch if it had been me.

When you do decide to come back, best skip Detroit. I've been stuck there a few times myself. Nice airport, but they've definitely got some organizational issues there.

[frenchani.livejournal.com]

Well first I didn't tell them, but I guessed that Jane had spilled the beans on phone when they questioned her about how we met, where, when...etc And I was right!

Hadn't I given the same story they would have thought I was hiding something...

When I come back I'll buy sit down on my pride and principles and buy a visa this time. I'm on their data now and getting a visa in paris is the only way to avoid troubles with immigration in the States.

Every time I told my story in Vegas, in CA and later in NYC(I spent a whole month travelling in the States), people were very sorry.

Well at least I had a story to tell!