Glenn Close Is Golden in The Summer Book

Let’s give Glenn Close her Oscar, shall we? The decorated actor has won three Primetime Emmy Awards, three Tony Awards, and three Golden Globe Awards, but never the Academy Award, despite being nominated no fewer than eight times (more than any non-winning actor save Peter O’Toole, with whom she is tied). Surely, she is deserving, and in The Summer Book, at 78, she gives a fully Oscarworthy performance as a doting, devoted grandmother facing her own mortality. Charlie McDowell’s adaptation of Tove Jansson’s beloved Nordic novel is a quietly winsome study of grief and love, set on an isolated island in Finland where the cycles of the natural world—growth and death, love and loss, summer and winter—ebb and flow like the tides.

Close’s turn as an aged Finnish grandmother is far afield from the batsh*t-crazy-evil-or bordering-thereon roles for which she might be more famous—the murderous jilted ex in Fatal Attraction, the cunning aristocrat in Dangerous Liaisons, Hamlet’s conniving Queen Gertrude, the villainous Cruella de Vil in 101 Dalmatians and its sequel, or even her ready-for-her-close-up star turn on Broadway as Sunset Boulevard’s devilishly deluded Norma Desmond. Even alongside these, however, Close’s vitae is full of varied roles in excellent films like The World According to Garp, The Natural, The Jagged Edge, The Big Chill, and The Accidental Tourist; her native intelligence and steely resolve elevates even pop pap like Air Force One and sour sap like Hillbilly Elegy. She has always been, and still is, worth watching.

Here in The Summer Book, Close is closer to her Hallmark hit Sarah Plain and Tall than Fatal Attraction. Close’s (unnamed) grandmother lives alone on her island in the Gulf of Finland, tending to the few trees that dare grow on the rocky shore. She is delighted by a summer-long visit from her son (also unnamed, played by Anders Danielsen Lie) and his daughter, little Sophia (Emily Matthews). The summer that unfolds is, for the most part, a quiet one, as the father works in isolation on his drawings and young Sophia and her grandmother spend their days exploring the island, conversing about life, and pondering its mysteries.

All three are grieving the loss of Sophia’s mother, but her name, life, or any details about her death are never mentioned explicitly. Sophia’s father seems struck especially hard by the loss and is unable to speak directly to or of it; grandmother, meanwhile, is determined that he will need to move on and accept his loss in order to parent little Sophia well. As might any child, Sophia finds the island both delightful and restrictive: being so confined for a full summer has her praying for something—anything, even a storm—to happen.

Sophia’s prayer proves to be a bit of Chekhovian foreshadowing and the film’s single sole event that pivots all three characters, especially the father, towards the kind of growth that will let him accept his grief and turn his attention to parenting his only child. The Summer Book‘s narrative is slight and its dialogue sparse, but it’s nonetheless meaningful and profound, taking its time to lay a strong foundation for what happens in its final act.

Close, of course, could hardly be better as the proudly independent live-alone grandmother, set in her ways but resolutely self-possessed and determined to see little Sophia through her difficult loss. She knows well the girl needs to love and be loved, to pursue her goals and seek relationships despite her father’s all-consuming grief. And she knows that father needs a kick in the pants or come-to-Jesus moment for that to happen. The makeup and effects work that ages Close (far beyond what you’ll see in the coming series All’s Fair) is wholly convincing, as is the actor’s own performance, creaking her even-fully-naked body across the island’s jagged rocks with the measured gait of the former diver her character once was.

As young Sophia, Emily Matthews is nearly her accomplished colleague’s peer in a role that might be equally deserving of an Oscar itself. Veering between studiousness and rebelliousness, Sophia’s character is an unpredictable but wholly believable delight. Playing her father, Danielsen Lie has much less screen time—and the narrative is far less interested in his grief than in how it impacts Sophia—but is no less credible.

The island itself is practically its own character, binding together the three central characters but also isolating them from the world around them. Its waves pound like a beating heart but its storms can threaten their lives. The landscape cinematography by DP Sturla Brandth Grøvlen is simply stunning, depicting the island as its own living, growing habitat that protects and threatens, and the interiors are lit with a natural soft light of a classical Vermeer. The Summer Book could not be more pleasant to look at.

The film’s ambient piano-based score from Hania Rani is, especially in the final act, affecting, even if elsewhere its volume will occasionally drown out the characters’ dialogue. The Summer Book is one of those films that aims to present intimate conversations realistically but does so at times nearly inaudibly; watching it on a streaming service will at least afford you the option to turn on its closed captions.

But no matter: no one will walk away from The Summer Book thinking about a first-act line of dialogue they might have missed. Viewers will no doubt instead leave its Finnish island just like director McDowell intended, feeling full of life and love and contemplating their own fragile relationships and mortality. The island’s unique topography and the film’s firm narrative will linger on in the memory after its credits—which feature, alongside them, home-movie footage, I assume from the author of the book on which it is based—roll toward their own conclusion.

And, I’m certain, they’ll be thinking one other thing: it’s time to give the great Glenn Close her Oscar.