Dream Wired
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Celebrity
  • DramaAlert
  • Gossip
  • Movie
  • TV
  • Music
  • Comics
  • Shop
  • Home
  • Celebrity
  • DramaAlert
  • Gossip
  • Movie
  • TV
  • Music
  • Comics
  • Shop
No Result
View All Result
Dream Wired
No Result
View All Result
Home Movie

‘My Eternal Summer’ Review: A Touching Danish Weepie

rmtsa by rmtsa
October 1, 2024
in Movie
0
‘My Eternal Summer’ Review: A Touching Danish Weepie
74
SHARES
1.2k
VIEWS
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter


You might also like

Hi, I’m Lindsey Bahr, AP’s film reporter and critic. I report on all things movies and I’m here to chat about the summer box office. Ask me anything!

Ryan Gosling Reportedly Eyed to Play Ghost Rider in Marvel’s AVENGERS: DOOMSDAY — GeekTyrant

‘Karate Kid: Legends’ Review: Two Franchises, One Sequel

Told through the eyes of 15-year-old Fanny (Kaya Toft Loholt), the intimate, deeply moving My Eternal Summer (Min Evige Sommer) observes an eventful vacation spent waiting for Fanny’s terminally ill mother, Karin (Maria Rossing), to die. In delicately balanced scenes filled with poignant detail, Denmark-based director Sylvia Le Fanu (making her feature debut) and her co-writer Mads Lind Knudsen unfurl a very Scandinavian portrait of a highly cultured bourgeois family facing a terrible trauma with stoicism, humor and quite a bit of drinking, often in tastefully decorated rooms.

After premiering in the New Directors strand at San Sebastian, the drama takes a short break to play in the BFI London Film Festival in another competitive strand. Its accessible depth of feeling could help it win distribution beyond the Nordic realms.

My Eternal Summer

The Bottom Line

Sad smiles on a warm night.

Venue: San Sebastian Film Festival (New Directors)Cast: Kaya Toft Loholt, Maria Rossing, Anders Mossling, Jasper Kruse SvaboDirector: Sylvia Le FanuScreenwriter: Sylvia Le Fanu, Mads Lind Knudsen
1 hour 45 minutes

Although Fanny appears in practically every scene in the film, the camera does occasionally break away to spend moments alone here and there with Fanny’s parents, Karin and Johan (Anders Mossling), as they cope with the logistics and inner turmoil of dealing with Karin’s impending death, presumably from cancer. But the viewpoint is so embedded with Fanny that, mimicking the way children live in blissful ignorance of how their parents provide for them, the sparse script never even tells us exactly what the couple do for a living — though scenes of Karin playing piano throughout and later talk of her students suggest she was either a musician or music teacher, while Johan’s dry wit and the way he totes around a book about the gulag hint that he might be an academic.

The point is that this this nuclear family of three is spending their last vacation together at their summer home, a charming seaside cottage located some distance from Copenhagen. No one is talking about work at this point. In fact, there’s not a lot of conversation going on at all as the trio settle into the dusty house, accept delivery of a hospital bed (since Karin can’t climb the stairs anymore) and make arrangements for the district nurse to pay home visits for her last days.

A dutiful only child, Fanny helps out as much as she can, but she’s still a teenager and thus prey to all the usual self-absorption. Her frustration with the cottage’s poor Wi-Fi signal is a sure sign of her restlessness as she copes with a profound sense of sadness about losing her mother, but also with boredom.

Her relationship with her boyfriend Jamie (Jasper Kruse Svabo), a sweet dim lunk of a guy, takes up a lot of her mental bandwidth. After his short visit in the early days of the trip, Fanny somewhat irrationally sees his subsequent lack of contact as ghosting, when really he’s probably just busy with sports and life back in the capital. She writes a wonderfully bad self-pitying poem about the last time they said goodbye and reads it to Karin, who naturally thinks at first that it’s a poem about her own imminent departure. When she works out that it’s actually about Jamie, she looks both faintly put out and mildly amused.

Such well observed details are sprinkled throughout, revealing the complexity, fallibility and kindness  of ordinary people. At one point, Fanny tries to do one of those online personality tests and asks her folks which of a series of three-adjective sets best describe her: “serious, honest, faithful,” for example, or “loving, smart, thoughtful”? Johan, disdainful of the whole reductive sham, suggests she’s “bossy,” and he’s right. But Fanny is also all of the above, as well as angry, confused and, ultimately, deeply empathic once she stops mooning over Jamie.

As Karin’s condition slowly worsens, and friends come to say farewell at one last birthday party, the poor kid goes through all the stages of grief at once. At the end, she has just enough fortitude to do the right thing by her mother and father.

The subject matter alone could be enough to trigger geysers of tears in viewers, but what makes Le Fanu’s direction especially impressive is its lack of sentimentality. Instead, she focuses on daily rituals — the little murmurs of gratitude and kindness, and the sense of exhaustion that stretches out for hours, days and weeks as one waits for someone to die.

Jan Bastian Munoz Marthinsen’s bright, clean lighting sits patiently by the characters’ sides and doesn’t draw any undue attention to itself. That goes as well for the score by Patricio Fraile and sound design by Frederik Lehmann Mikkelson, which work in tight tandem, mixing cello sighs with the sound of waves drifting to shore in equal measure. The performances from the whole cast, but above all Toft Loholt, Rossing and Mossling, are likewise no less pitch perfect.



Source link

Tags: DanishETERNALReviewSummerTouchingWeepie
Share30Tweet19
rmtsa

rmtsa

Recommended For You

Hi, I’m Lindsey Bahr, AP’s film reporter and critic. I report on all things movies and I’m here to chat about the summer box office. Ask me anything!

by rmtsa
May 28, 2025
0
Hi, I’m Lindsey Bahr, AP’s film reporter and critic. I report on all things movies and I’m here to chat about the summer box office. Ask me anything!

Hi, my name is Lindsey Bahr, and I’ve been a film reporter and critic for The Associated Press for over 10 years. I cover all things movies, including...

Read more

Ryan Gosling Reportedly Eyed to Play Ghost Rider in Marvel’s AVENGERS: DOOMSDAY — GeekTyrant

by rmtsa
May 28, 2025
0
Ryan Gosling Reportedly Eyed to Play Ghost Rider in Marvel’s AVENGERS: DOOMSDAY — GeekTyrant

Could Ryan Gosling be taking on the role of the Spirit of Vengeance in the MCU? According to a new rumor, Marvel Studios may be looking at casting...

Read more

‘Karate Kid: Legends’ Review: Two Franchises, One Sequel

by rmtsa
May 28, 2025
0
‘Karate Kid: Legends’ Review: Two Franchises, One Sequel

“Two branches, one tree.” That’s the mantra of the karate and kung fu masters in Karate Kid: Legends. They repeat the phrase ad nauseum, as if reciting it enough will eventually...

Read more

Spencer Pratt’s Comment on Heidi Montag Wig Controversy Explained

by rmtsa
May 28, 2025
0
Spencer Pratt’s Comment on Heidi Montag Wig Controversy Explained

With Heidi Montag‘s recent appearance at the 2025 American Music Awards red carpet turning many heads, her husband, Spencer Pratt, has come out to share some encouraging words...

Read more

Kathy Bates Says Garry Marshall Rejected Her for Role Due to Her Looks

by rmtsa
May 28, 2025
0
Kathy Bates Says Garry Marshall Rejected Her for Role Due to Her Looks

Kathy Bates claims the late Garry Marshall declined to cast her in 1991’s Frankie and Johnny because of her appearance. The veteran actress opened up about the way...

Read more
Next Post
‘Vanderpump Rules’ Star Lala Kent on Her “Only” Show Regret

'Vanderpump Rules' Star Lala Kent on Her "Only" Show Regret

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Browse by Category

  • Celebrity
  • Comics
  • DramaAlert
  • Gossip
  • Movie
  • Music
  • TV
  • Uncategorized

CATEGORIES

  • Celebrity
  • Comics
  • DramaAlert
  • Gossip
  • Movie
  • Music
  • TV
  • Uncategorized
No Result
View All Result

Recent News

  • How to Get Noticed As a New Band
  • Hi, I’m Lindsey Bahr, AP’s film reporter and critic. I report on all things movies and I’m here to chat about the summer box office. Ask me anything!
  • ‘House Of Villains’ Season 3 Full Cast, Peacock Sets 2026 Release Date

Copyright © 2023 DramaWired.
DramaWired is a content aggregator and not responsible for the content of external sites.

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Celebrity
  • DramaAlert
  • Gossip
  • Movie
  • TV
  • Music
  • Comics
  • Shop

Copyright © 2023 DramaWired.
DramaWired is a content aggregator and not responsible for the content of external sites.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In