A thumb to suck in troubled times, “Summerland” offers a digit of nostalgia that many viewers will latch onto with something approaching relief.
Set mainly during World War II, this picturesque debut feature from Jessica Swale is as uninterested in international conflict as Alice (Gemma Arterton), its distracted heroine. We find her in her shabby-chic cottage on the Kentish coast, a crabby author who — the film pointedly stresses — deeply dislikes children. She’s not at all happy, then, to be lumbered with Frank (Lucas Bond), a sweet-natured schoolboy evacuated from London. I think we can all see where this is going.
Getting there, though, will require frustratingly timid flashbacks to an interracial, same-sex relationship (featuring a woefully underemployed Gugu Mbatha-Raw) and airy-fairy conversations on the cultural mythologies that Alice studies. These fancies, and their role in building a bridge between Alice and Frank, are far more central to the child-friendly narrative than either forbidden love or the gender stereotyping rejected by Frank’s pal, Edie (Dixie Egerickx), a spiky tomboy.
“I’m a maverick,” Edie explains; but Swale is too busy wholesomely sewing up every problem to care. Warm and soft and benignly manipulative — the movie’s sole death is scandalously opportune — “Summerland” brims with genteel sentiment and British briskness. Arterton is a wonderful actor, when not constrained by picture-book settings and prickly-spinster clichés. And an ending so contrived it will blow your mind.
Summerland
Rated PG for a chaste kiss and free-spirited smoking. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. Rent or buy on Google Play and Vudu and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators.
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July 30, 2020 at 06:00PM
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‘Summerland’ Review: A Writer’s Life, Past and Present - The New York Times
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