My Summer of Love

A masterful three-character chamber piece from Pawel Pawlikowski (apparently his debut feature Last Resort is another film to look for), this tale of two mismatched teen girls in love is naturally dependent on the performers. In a depressed but picturesque Yorkshire village, Natalie Press (Mona) is an isolated but animated, gritty but witty, working-class girl (reminiscent of Sissy Spacek in Carrie or Badlands), who happens to hook up with Emily Blunt (Tamsin), riding her high horse down from her mansion on the hill, where she is holed up after being suspended from boarding school. Paddy Considine (of In America fame) plays Mona’s brother, a violent ex-con who’s found Jesus and turned their mother’s pub into an evangelical meeting place. The set-up seems obvious enough, but the film has enough twists of mood and incident to make it seem unpredictable. There’s swoony adolescent romance, but also a restless probing of character for fantasy and pretense. The camerawork can be skittish and subjective, but also strikingly pictorial. But again, it’s the three performers who make the sale, on this fresh and affecting story of love and deceit. Thanks to Images Cinema for bringing in one of the best-reviewed films of the summer; see it there through next Thursday (7/21). (2005, Images, n.) *7+* (MC-82, RT-90.)