My Summer of Love (UK, 2004)
directed by Pawel Pawlikowski

Summer holidays. Two girls, one an orphan “tomboy” living in a pub, her brother a former criminal recently converted to Christianity, eagerly pouring out all of the booze. The other filthy rich living in a country house, horse-riding, private school, decadent. Met. And? As if the title isn’t obvious enough.

Don’t know what other reviewers are raving about. The story cheesy, the hormonal angst irritating, the predictability driving me up the wall, and were it not for the fact that this was my first time paying to see a movie in a theatre after a few blissfully ignorant years I’d have stormed out of the theatre and shoved the ticket up the reeler’s arse.

Now that that’s out of the way, OK, the shootings are pretty at times, but the tepid cliché of two female teenagers experimenting with and obsessing over each other, peppered with the so-called “tragic” family problems of the rich and the decadent… topped with the most expected twist at the ending—complete turn off, really. I repeat: I shall not wander into a movie theatre when I have a three-hour break. I will spend my time doing worthwhile causes such as reading and researching in the library for hidden AV porns.

It’s based on a novel by Helen Cross with the same title, but some—positively glowing—reviews I’ve read made me cringe further. “Reminiscent of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar.” Uh-huh, that nails the coffin.