Hal Kitchen
There’s a defined subgenre of coming-of-age movie especially prevalent in European cinema and it’s typified by the “summer holiday” setting. Films like Pauline at the Beach, My Dad the Hero or Homecoming where a young person, usually a girl, but not always, goes away with her family for what is likely the last time. You probably remember that last family holiday where you were fifteen or sixteen when you felt a little old to be going on holiday with your parents and wished you were there with your friends and took every opportunity to slip off and be with someone your own age. It’s an evocative scenario for exploring that stage of adolescence. You’re supposed to be having fun but what “fun” means to you is starting to change and your parents can sense that you’d rather be off kissing boys than building sandcastles with mom and dad. For Fanny (Kaya Toft Loholt) the protagonist of My Eternal Summer, her own last summer with her parents is especially fraught, because for her mom Karin (Maria Rossing), it really shall be her last summer.
Karin is dying of breast cancer. Treatment has failed her and she has chosen to spend her last weeks on earth in the company of the people she loves at her family’s new country cottage. However, Fanny is sixteen and half out of selfishness and half out of denial, she’s not that interested in spending her summer vacation holding her mother’s hand, helping her to the bathroom and changing pressure bandages. Before too long, she’ll wish she had been but for now, her world is her boyfriend Jamie (Jasper Kruse Svabo) and all her self-worth is tied up in whether he likes her, not whether her mother thinks she’s being a good daughter. Their relationship is mostly very positive, but it’s clear that their time together isn’t as precious to Fanny as it is to Karin. Typically for someone her age, Fanny is selfish and isn’t dealing with her mother’s mortality very well, nor is she all that perceptive to her feelings, all too easily forgetting that which her mother is never free of for a moment.
These differing senses of priority are neatly embodied in the scene (included in the trailer below) where Fanny asks her parents for help with a personality quiz, and to describe her in three words. Karin says she sees her daughter as “loving, smart and thoughtful” but failing to read the room, Fanny replies that she would rather be perceived as “extrovert, positive and funny”. Meanwhile Dad Johan (Anders Mossling) says those quizzes are dumb, and people can’t be summarized in just three adjectives. At first glace the scene seems mundane but on reflection it’s actually pulling a lot of weight establishing those themes early, with Fanny’s pursuit of Jamie somewhat paralleling her mother’s efforts to get her daughter’s attention.
The scene is set for a potentially explosive melodrama but first time director Sylvia le Fanu’s approach to the material is extremely realist, as is that of her cast, with the predominant tone being rather dry, detached and objective. There’s little music and the camera seldom moves in My Eternal Summer, allowing the characters actions to speak for themselves. That’s all very well, but for my money, the best moments in My Eternal Summer are when Fanny’s adolescent detachment is pricked and the film indulges itself in moments with more subjectivity and intimacy that I wish could’ve been the template for more of the film. It’s also true that the film can often feel rather one note and the third act when it does arrive feels very welcome in that respect, as its where much of the film’s most standout scenes lie. Nonetheless, moments like these have a real emotional weight and building to them so stealthily does have its merits. Le Fanu certainly does display traits that mark her out as a talent to watch and I hope she gets more ambitious in later features because its the bolder moments that will stick with you.
