J Paul Johnson
Iranian filmmaker Kaveh Daneshmand’s feature directorial debut Endless Summer Syndrome (Le syndrome de l’été sans fin), which opens day-and-date on digital and in select theaters on December 13 in North America, mixes up a frothy cocktail of taboo and tension. Made independently with a distinctive visual style and a stellar cast, Endless Summer Syndrome wrings every ounce of suspense possible from a plot sprung from a single anonymous phone call, one that exposes the cracks and fissures behind a well-to-do French family’s façade.
The family consists of high-powered lawyer Delphine (Sophie Colon) and her handsome husband Antoine (Mathéo Capelli), a writer, and their two adopted teen children: 18-year-old Aslan (Gem Deger), the son who is about to go to college in the U.S., and 17-year old daughter Adia (Frédérika Milano). Their last summer before Aslan’s leaving is spend largely together poolside on their tony estate, enjoying cocktails and each others’ company as Antoine plugs away at late corrections on his manuscript. It’s a family Delphine has all but selected, it seems, with the deliberation of a methodical lawyer constructing a case. The family lives in isolation, the only signpost nearby a tourist destination: an imposing dam that suggests something is being welled up and held back.
It is just ten minutes in when Delphine receives the fated phone call. An anonymous woman, a colleague of her husband’s, alleges that at a conference a drunken Antoine confessed to having “something going on” with one of “her” children. It’s an ambiguous, uncertain accusation, and it turns Delphine’s summer upside down. Rather than confront Antoine directly, she goes into stealth mode, quietly conducting her own investigation into her husband’s behavior, especially around the beautiful and not infrequently naked Adia.
The film is divided into a triptych of a three-day weekend, and the rest of the first act and the whole of the second act are devoted to Delphine’s reconnaissance and examinations. She’s lawyer-smart, much too clever to give herself away as she slyly interrogates Aslan, Adia, and Antoine separately, pumping each for any clue to an illicit affair being conducted in her own home, amongst her own family members, under her nose. What begins as suspicion turns into obsession, and a great deal of Endless Summer Syndrome‘s excellence comes from its subtly turning Delphine’s screw. The audience knows and understands her objective, but her family members do not, and she’s determined to learn the truth but not to expose herself in the process.
Shot mostly in the confines of the family’s gilded country home, in its swank living quarters and brilliant-blue pool, the film uses a nearly-square aspect ratio to create a sense of uncomfortable claustrophobia, with characters often in such close proximity it’s hard not to imagine, like Delphine does, a palpable sexual energy between them. Even more impressive, though, than the film’s excellent use of mise-en-scène is Colon’s breakout performance as Delphine, a woman who would want nothing better to enjoy the waning days of summer with her tight-knit family but is instead tortured by the prospect of their incestuousness. As Delphine, Colon can easily channel her younger free-spirited self but can just as quickly knot her brow and purse her lips into a corkscrew of discontent.
The script—co-written by Deger and Daneshmand with Laurine Bauby—is undeniably pulpy but more than willing to reveal the family’s secrets in an explicit third act as the film pivots from inquiry to a trial (of sorts) and punishment. Delphine’s family is one she has carefully constructed, choosing her husband and adopted children and raising in a postmodern-progressivist milieu of openness. But can it stand? As Delphine gets closer and closer to the truth—ultimately revealed to her in a scene of frank and wholly unambiguous clarity—she realizes she must take some sort of action.
Alongside Colon’s expert portrayal of Delphine, the rest of the cast is excellent as well. Capelli’s Antoine is the very picture of midlife intellectual appeal with his thick graying hair and good looks, but he too can break with emotion. Deger’s Aslan is, for much of the film, kept at a little distance, characterized by his care for his coterie of pet snails and other creatures—who will, it turns out, figure quite neatly in the film’s explosive climax. He too is given the opportunity to reveal his innermost desires. As Adia, Milano has a little less to do but is no less convincing in the role. Together, the four make for a compelling family, composited by Delphine’s selection but tested by their continual proximity.
That the film addresses the taboo of incest so openly will certainly repel viewers expecting a moral condemnation of sorts. That’s not something films—at least good ones—do, and Endless Summer Syndrome borrows elements of one of western civilization’s oldest stories to tell something that feels fresh, daring, and surprisingly new. And much of what motivates Endless Summer Syndrome is simple old-school suspense. Let one character know or suspect what others don’t and follow as she pursues a truth that just may be too horrible to contemplate. There remains a giddy thrill in such a simple maneuver concocted so expertly.
Daneshmand’s debut feature never misses a beat, timing its surprises with pinpoint accuracy and giving both its protagonist and its audience plenty to wrestle with in terms of morality and ethics. It’s a great cocktail, and like one served at the film’s end, dangerously potent.
