How many films have deployed sex as the passage to adulthood? One of the newer ones, Laura Luchetti’s The Beautiful Summer, is showing at the Locarno Film Festival. The director describes it as freely inspired by the Cesare Pavese novel of the same name.
The film, like the novel, tells the story of Ginia (Yile Yara Vianello), a young girl who becomes curious and infatuated with the pleasures, the mysteries—the mysterious pleasures—of adult life. What is it like to make love, she asks? Tricky question. But she receives a reply: you become important to someone else for a few hours…maybe more.
If this seems like a rather cynical view of romance, it doesn’t register with Ginia. Our heroine isn’t dissuaded. Something has been ignited; a combustion isn’t far ahead, but whose place is it to tell her? Definitely not Amelia’s (a supremely well-cast Deva Cassel, heir of her famous parent’s killer genes). Ginia meets this incredibly sophisticated young woman while hanging out with friends one fine day.
Amelia, in fact, might be the source of Ginia’s craving. Luchetti shows how this happens in a scene staged like a meet-cute, on the arrival of this fascinating stranger. She hops off a boat that is still sailing and, unperturbed, walks to shore, her clothes clinging to her body and her head held high. She is beautiful and quite aware.
Ginia’s brother, Severino, is a quite conservative character and is repelled by the newcomer’s antics — she even smokes. Ginia, on the other hand, is intrigued. Luchetti concocts one fine shot of the women’s contrasting faces on the screen. Where Ginia is pale, her counterpart is ruddy. The meet-cute vibe of that maiden encounter is retained when both women meet a second time. Their legs, side by side, fill the frame.
Where Pavese’s novel might have hinted at homoeroticism, Luchetti’s film creates an entire atmosphere around it. But this isn’t Celine Sciamma’s well-reviewed 2019 feature, Portrait of a Lady on Fire. In The Beautiful Summer (La Bella Estate in Italian), same-sex relations are barely more than a suggestion. The film’s one physical act of love-making is decidedly heterosexual and features Guido, a painter Ginia meets through Amelia, who has a job posing for artists.
In today’s heavily capitalist world, it might be regarded as magical realism that an ostensibly non-rich painter living in a hovel can charm a woman of Amelia’s physical gifts. But then, Guido and his pal/roommate Rodrigues are Italian — plus the film is set in 1938’s Turin. In any case, Guido takes a shine to Ginia. As played by Alessandro Piavani, he is quite good-looking and comes equipped with the unexpectedly lethal pickup line: “I will paint you”.
It is apparently a devastating temptation for a woman of his time, or maybe just for a girl from the countryside seeking to flee her less-than-liberal upbringing. It helps that Luchetti has the painter utter the line millimetres from Ginia’s face. Courtesy of Simona Paggi’s editing, the next time we see the pair, Ginia’s clothes are coming off.
It is never crystal clear if the sex is great but Luchetti, who wrote the screenplay, is explicit about Ginia’s resulting shift of focus. The loss of innocence comes at a price. Once a rising star at her workplace, she starts to show up late. Once a dependable sister to her brother, their relationship becomes strained. Amelia, too, is a casualty of her new friend’s shift in focus. With things falling apart in the aftermath of sex, The Beautiful Summer makes a case for mental preparedness. Perhaps sex ought to be left for those ready for the consequences, regardless of its attractiveness to the young and inquisitive. Those consequences, it is suggested, may be more devastating for women.
Away from the politics of a story first told some 85 years ago by a male novelist, the new film is frequently gorgeous and the acting of its small cast is impeccable. Some minutes could be shaved off the almost two hours of runtime, but this is a film so well made that its festival rounds seem predestined. Streaming platforms catering to non-mainstream or semi-mainstream tastes may then grant it a deserved afterlife.
Director: Laura Luchetti
Screenplay: Laura Luchetti (based on a Cesare Pavese novel)
Cast: Yile Yara Vianello, Deva Cassel, Nicolas Maupas, Alessandro Piavani, Adrien Dewitte, Cosima Centurioni
Cinematography: Diego Romero Suarez Llanos
Editing: Simona Paggi
Producers: Giovanni Pompili, Luca Legnani
Associate producers: Giovanna Foglia, Daniele Gentili, Andrea Occhipinti
Production: Kino Produzioni, Rai Cinema, 9.99 Films
Venue: Locarno Film Festival (Piazza Grande)
In Italian
111 minutes
