Jonathon Dabell Filmed at the termination point of the Calder Valley, Yorkshire, where it runs into Lancashire (with a few scenes shot in Bacup over on the Red Rose side of the border), My Summer Of Love is a nicely shot, relatively brief and mostly engrossing character study loosely adapted from a novel by Helen Cross. It examines the growth of a lesbian love affair between two extremely different – seemingly incompatible – teen aged girls, separated by a gulf in class, interests, education and upbringing. Throughout the film, there remains a continual question mark over the actuality of their relationship – is it real? Is it mutual? Or is at least one of the girls cruelly playing with the other's emotions?One hot summer in Yorkshire, aimless teenager Mona (Natalie Press) meets a girl of similar age from an upper middle class background, the enigmatic and troublesome Tamsin (Emily Blunt). Mona lives with her only living relative – her brother Phil (Paddy Considine) – in a pub called The Swan, which was run by their mother before she died of cancer. Phil is a former jailbird, now a born-again Christian, who no longer operates The Swan as a pub but instead uses it as a gathering place for religious meetings with his like-minded friends Frustrated by her brother's activities, and ditched by her mean-spirited f@ck-buddy Ricky (Dean Andrews), Mona finds herself gravitating more and more towards her new friend Tamsin. It becomes clear that Tamsin's family set-up is a mess – her mother is hardly ever at home, her father is dismissive and is suspected of having an affair with his secretary, and her sister died of anorexia. Rapidly, Tamsin and Mona discover an ally in each other – someone with whom to share their inner turmoil, their disconnectedness from their families, their need to be loved. And it isn't long before they do indeed fall in love. Meanwhile, Phil plans to construct a huge cross and erect it on a hilltop above the valley, to drive out the 'evil' he senses in the people living there. Mona has no interest in attending the rally at which the cross is to be unveiled, but Tamsin insists on being there. It gradually becomes clear Tamsin wants something from Phil – but what? Is she attracted to him, or does she merely plan to lure him in before humiliating him over his religious beliefs? Moreover, if she is capable of playing such cruel games, what is to say she isn't also playing games with Mona's heart? As the summer heat-wave builds, so too the emotions of the characters boil over into lust and violence.A small, quiet film which stays on the side of subtlety rather than opting for melodramatic excesses, My Summer Of Love is well-acted and believable throughout. Press plays Mona well, conveying the frustration, confusion and (to some extent) trashiness of the character convincingly. Pre-stardom Blunt is also excellent as Tamsin, fleshing out the character with many nuances which make it hard to decide whether she is a genuinely disaffected young lady or a manipulative bitch who gets her kicks from breaking hearts and causing havoc. The ever-reliable Considine rounds off the main characters brilliantly, playing a man ostensibly calm and peaceable on the outside but with an ever-present hint of ominous rage within. Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski directs the film with a typically European sensibility. It's unusual to find a foreign director tackling one of these Yorkshire-set stories, but it must be said he brings something new and fascinating to the proceedings. The harsher, uglier side of Yorkshire is usually presented in these films, but here Pawlikowski contrasts these things with the glorious wide open spaces of the countryside. The darkness and bleakness exist more within the characters than the setting, and the contrasts that result are very stark and effective. Sometimes the film teeters on the brink of being a little too self-consciously arty, and the relatively short running time might leave some viewers wanting more (more explanation, more characterisation, more tying together of the loose ends), but all in all My Summer Of Love is a very worthwhile little film. For its strong performances and eye-catching cinematography alone, it deserves to be seen.

Nuthania Nuthania This movie really held my attention. I almost felt as if I was a part of it because of how emotionally involved it made me. The scenery was beautiful and the music bizarre and trippy. Tamsin was a very cultured character and her confidence (in the beginning) is very appealing. Later on though, you just start to wonder if she is hungry for attention because of insecurity. I give this a 9 and not a 10 because the ending where Mona tries to drown Tamsin was disappointing to me...but it did leave us all with a sense of confusion which I think makes the movie more interesting all in all. Definitely worth watching

BarryWaller As vividly, as well as fatally, as opposites attract in real life, so My Summer Of Love presents us with a choice of wildly colourful opposites to be drawn to: Tamsen, a bored, privileged, pathological liar out for kicks, ultimately at the devastating expense of her new lover Mona, herself newly spurned by a local much-too-old schlub. One can identify with Mona's plight, that of an orphaned teen on a motor-less bike in a bleak working class hub of town, with absolutely no prospects. Or one can identify with Tamsen, left alone in her family's enormous home for an entire summer, only capable of experiencing passion from behind a facade of elaborate lies. You just know after Tamsen's shattering deception of Mona that neither will ever be the same again. You are left to wonder how embittered Mona will now grow, having now been so cruelly lead on by by members of both sexes, the latter whom she grows to love deeply. You are equally left to wonder how Mona's reaction to Tamsen's summer-long deceits might penetrate the latter.Ultimately one might be equally drawn to facets of both characters, as they collectively represent the harder coming-into-awareness lessons we all learn: sooner or later we're all spurned, sooner or later we all protect our vulnerability behind lies, sooner or later love fades no matter how elaborate or widespread the pursuit. The hardest lesson, as starkly depicted in My Summer Of Love's final moments, is how love is perhaps more an experience unique to the individual than something shared. Tamsen seems to have instinctively known this all along, cynically protecting herself through her building and inhabiting a fantasy world; Mona turns out to be her plaything, a plaything who believes her beloved Tamsen, literally on a white horse, is nothing less than her savior and ticket out of bleak working-class nowheres-ville. Tamsen is master of the set-up, Mona truly loves. Her allegiance to Tamsen is a currency equal parts genuine, desperate, hopeless. When the smoke clears and Tamsen is left to return to school and Mona to her dead-end town, who has had the greater love, rich shielded Tamsen, or poor vulnerable Mona?

johnnyboyz My Summer of Love is a wonderfully observed, simmering drama about love, identity and coming-of-age shared between two girls during one warm summer in a sleepy and somewhat unspectacular rural area of England. But where the tall, lonely country houses sit amongst the overkill of trees and tall plantation hidden away, remarkable items happen to two young souls running on scarred prior histories amidst the sunny haze, culminating in a rather terrifying sequence capturing the destructive nature of an extreme fondness for another human being in a location previously established to be a safe haven for admitting said fondness. The film clocks in at under an hour and a half, but achieves so much more and gives you that sense of journey in this short runtime than certain other films clocking in at a round two hours can seemingly do.The girls of the film are Mona (Press) and Tamsin (Blunt), two individuals that meet in a field when the latter, by way of horseback, rides along and finds Mona lying in the grass. Very quickly, the film establishes a sense of empowerment in the character of Tamsin; her position on a horse as we look up from Mona's point of view is distinctive in its use of low angle and positioning of one character quite literally on the floor with the other atop an animal. Mona is bored and lonely, living with recently released but now converted Christian criminal Phil (Considine), her brother, in a disused public house they own; whereas Tamsin is away on suspension from her boarding school for whatever reason. Her place of dwelling being a large and somewhat dystopian place for Mona when she first visits; captured by way of a long shot of the entrance hallway from the inside as she stumbles through the panel floored room full of riches and items.The girls are both of different classes and backgrounds. Lisa is a somewhat rough, pub dwelling loose cannon whose male partner makes crude love to her in the back of his car as during the days, she drifts aimlessly around and mocks her brother's attempts to live a life so much differently to that of his previous one. But these young women are bound by their being stuck in said location and in their inability to connect with parental family figures; plus, a supposed initial sense of unity through past suffering of a death within the family. What follows is a predominant uncovering of sexuality, although certain characters have certain secrets that become more omnipresent in what is a wonderful character piece with the greatest of respects to its subject matter.The film is a mature character study, focusing on the transitions people go through at various stages of their life for whatever reason, with religious transitions and changes linked to one's sexuality taking centre stage. But these transitions are not easy, and what differentiates them from one another is that Phil's is an enforced change, something he consciously takes on with his sister Mona's gradual veering into homosexuality sincerely natural. Polish born director Pawel Pawlikowski shoots the film's location with a warm and misleadingly welcoming glare, complimenting the sorts of emotions I think Mona goes through when she first meets Tamsin and eventually comes to recognise the friendship between them. His long shots of the overall village and its surrounding hills and train lines make it look a bit like a model, as if it isn't really real, which systematically sets up that sense of falseness within some of the characters in the film; that sense of all is not as real as initially established. Later on, whilst in a more suburban part of the town and a housing estate, Tamsin will remark to Mona how fake she thinks everything looks: "like Lego" she exclaims, as the bricked up and much-akin to one another houses stand tall and bland, the sorts of cars in the driveway that Marv from 2005's Sin City would describe as looking like "electric shavers".As their friendship and trust deepens, further visits to Tamsin's large house unfolds for Mona; each one shot as less awe-striking than the first as she gradually settles her way into this relationship with a girl outside of her own class divide. Pawlikowski's script has them dance to an Edith Piaf song together, striking up some rather typical but deliberately so links to French music; the French and that odd sense of romance some people have when thinking of such items. When a kiss ensures at a local secluded spring amidst the sunny glare, Mona tries on a number of different dresses once again back at the house until she can find the right one, a metaphorical sequence capturing her attempts in finding a 'new' her, as her changing persona becomes more apparent.My Summer of Love captures the sense of undergoing transition wonderfully, an identifying of an old way of life or belief then the systematic moving on and away from it. In Phil, that once criminal life that he wishes to bury with a newfound sense of Christianity, as groups of religious people congregate in rooms once lent to drinking one's self into a stupor; is counter-produced with Mona's rejection of her old lifestyle: lazy days doing nothing and evenings of easy, empty sex swapped for a newer and fresher relationship with someone whom will eventually inform her of the kind of love, or loving exchange, that'll instead mean something. Despite disliking brother Phil, and the film making it known she has very few things in common with him, what happens to them both towards the end as they go in search of that epiphany connects them in a way previously unseen as new ways of life and living take their toll. Stark, tragic and smart; My Summer of Love is thoroughly engaging.