Director: Jared Isaac
Writer: Jared Isaac
Stars: Mark McKenna, Lukita Maxwell, Louise Barnes
Synopsis: In a magical lake town, one couple and four best friends spend the final month before college chasing an endless summer.
Recently, and soon enough, millions of teenagers all around the world are graduating high school. This sudden breath of fresh air is hitting them and every aspect of their lives is changing. It’s a sense that all of life’s trivialities have suddenly been solved and there is a weight off their shoulders. Yet, there’s also this huge black cloud of “the future” just waiting to burst. This is the feeling captured in the film An Autumn Summer.
While there is a story and plot, An Autumn Summer functions mostly as a mood piece. The characters don’t say everything they’re thinking. We who have been through this transitional period know exactly what they’re thinking from the looks on their faces. When it does come down to it and we come to know that these four who are so close are going to be split apart, the mood shifts and that black cloud they didn’t want to speak of moves ever nearer. Their easy camaraderie and deep affection shifts from playfulness to a desperate need to hold on.
Jared Isaac’s script is impactful that way. In his hands, summer is a magic bubble. The final month of summer is the hardest. Creating time, making memories, and holding onto magic before the gossamer thread of that time slips away. Isaac, when directing his script, makes us feel every word, touch, and moment like a gentle, but perpetual wave lapping at our feet in the surf as the tide recedes.
Isaac, with the help of cinematographer Brandon Somerhalder, makes us feel the breeze from the lake or smell the flowers and grass with their visuals. It’s a lush vista of water, green forests, and welcoming sandy beaches. The interiors also feel as if we’re home even if we’ve never been there before. It looks, as the characters feel, like we’ve been transported somewhere unearthly and magical. Then, editor Daniela Ovi’s montages make the magic feel lived in and grounded like it could be a memory from any one of us.
That is where the film loses ground, though. Each of the characters are unique and they have their own stories to tell, but it all feels like the film is floating without much concrete detail to go on. It feels as if everyone is putting on an affectation. This can be explained away as a coping mechanism for the big change that is hitting them all at once, but it’s hard to get too attached to these characters. They don’t feel like they exist in our world even if they’re meant to. With that in mind, the film languishes in disconnected days of summer fun in between the bigger elements of the plot. A lot of it could feel irritatingly solipsistic and like we were invited to a party, but completely ignored if it weren’t for the four main actors.
All of the actors playing teens in this film are excellent and have a comfort with each other that is palpable and feels very real. Though, Lukita Maxwell stands out amongst them. As Cody, she has more of the heavy emotional lifting because it’s obvious from the first scenes that she’s grappling with something more than separation. Cody and Kevin (Mark McKenna) are dating and going to different schools, so then it’s up to the two of them to decide to try to continue dating or to move beyond that relationship and into something else. Maxwell pulls off a great feat of introspection and angst. She’s able to bring a much needed dose of reality to this gauzy summer film.
An Autumn Summer is frustratingly magical. It’s easy to sink into its warmth and memory, but can be trying when you want answers or details that are never forthcoming. That is the blessing and the curse of characters who know each other so well. There’s a short hand, but anyone watching feels left out. The film can be forgiven its faults as it conjures the feeling of when summer had promise and the fear of summer’s end in equal loving measure.
