Review: The Summer Book

Director: Charlie McDowell

Stars: Glenn Close, Emily Matthews, Anders Danielsen Lie

Like a rowboat knocking up on shore, Charlie McDowell’s 2024 picture The Summer Book gently arrives in select UK cinemas, it’s approach unassuming, befitting of a work that quietly impresses with cumulative effect. Adapted from the beloved Finnish novel by Tove Jansson – who, among other things, was creator of The Moomins – it is an intergenerational tale of family, grief and reconciliation as well as a calmly collected evocation of memory.

An unspoiled island in the Gulf of Finland provides the setting for a lightly brooding summer holiday, seen largely through the eyes of eight-year-old Sophia (Emily Matthews), whose unnamed Father uses the getaway to hunker down with his work as an illustrator, hiding from his parental role while struggling with the recent death of his wife; Sophia’s mother. Fulfilling the role of parent in his absence is his mother, Glenn Close’s otherwise unnamed Grandmother, a woman whose relationship to the land is portrayed as both devout and harmonious. She’s often seen setting things right, be it a picture fallen crooked on the wall, or a patch of overturned moss on a rock formation, as though setting the island to a perceived state of perfection or grace. Effectively isolated together by the negative space embodied by the Father, the young girl and the old woman move in tandem for long spells, crash against one another at others. But any troubles are as short-lived as a young girl’s propensity to hold a grudge. A good night’s sleep cures most ills.

The Summer Book is diaristic in it’s approach. A cottagecore breeze of inconsequential days. At it’s most picturesque it plays like one of the more sedate Studio Ghibli offerings recast in live action, depicting similar themes of family ties, taciturn but fundamentally good natured children and a sweeping reverence for protecting the natural world. It’s a film that relishes in quiet, insular, reflective moments. The pleasure of listening to morning birdsong. The disappointment of rainy days and cancelled plans. Or, more spiritedly, an afternoon’s light trespassing adventure. This is filmmaking at a more measured pace, which places much value in texture. The rough grain of a rock or the sun’s iridescence on a lapping wave is as important as any notion of story progression.

With such a limited collection of characters, casting is everything, and on this score McDowell and his casting directors Minna Sorvoja and Maggie Widstrand have truly lucked out. Close is in her element, stout and wily, relishing the opportunity to play in the wheelhouse of a Bergman-esque matriarch. And it’s not often that an elderly woman’s day-to-day is given so much screen consideration. The carefulness of her wading out to swim is as rich and as telling as any detail here. Danielsen Lie achieves much with little as the evasive Father, almost a shadow in the narrative until a storm allows opportunity for a moment of catharsis that channels the whole of the film to a point. He’s effective when it matters most. And then there’s young Matthews – the make or break of the entire project – who fortunately has an effortlessly naturalistic manner, offering a performance wise beyond her years without falling into the trap of precociousness.

But the real MVP may well be DP Sturla Brandth Grøvlen, whose eye relates these moments in a manner tinged with melancholic nostalgia. There’s an airiness to the edit which allows the images breathing space, but compositionally The Summer Book is almost always interesting, be it how rain falls on a window or the scorch of a red dawn against a cloudy sky, creating a smudge like a ghost hanging over the island – a particularly pregnant image given the pall of grief that threatens to sever a father/daughter relationship.

In a film about remembering childhood – about remembering the holidays of yesteryear – the most tender and generous passage is a kindred gift from one character to another. When the Grandmother laments that she’s forgotten her memories of camping as a young girl, Sophia relays her own experiences in succinctly poetic fashion. Wittingly or not, Sophia gives her Grandmother back her memories. It’s warm and gentle without spilling over into the mawkish or sentimental – a line that’s incredibly hard to teeter on. McDowell’s film pulls it off and, if the ending is slightly ambiguous, it also shows a fine level of restraint, allowing the viewer to apply their own relative optimism or pessimism as The Summer Book discreetly recedes from view.

McDowell’s well-founded gentleness may be its own glass ceiling but it shouldn’t be taken for granted, either. Over a summer typified by brash, maximalist entertainment tentpoles, here’s a tonic for the chaos found elsewhere. A cherishable holiday from the noise, if you like. Sometimes going back to basics is exactly what you need.