November 6, 2024
FILM: IN THE SUMMERS
DIRECTED BY: ALESSANDRA LACORAZZA
STARRING: RESIDENTE, SASHA CALLE, LIO MEHIEL
RATING: 3 out of 4 stars
By Dan Pal
In the Summers focuses on two sisters from California as they spend their summers with their dad Vicente in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Vicente is played by Grammy-award winning rapper Residente. He’s got a shaved head, multiple tattoos, and a seemingly big heart. He’s also a bit reckless causing some less than welcome adventurous moments with his daughters. When we first meet them, the girls, Violeta and Eva, are pre-adolescent. They have a solid relationship with their father as they spend their time playing pool, hiking, and hanging at a local bar.
The time-spanning narrative in this film might remind some of Richard Linklater’s great Boyhood. However, while that project was shot over some sixteen years with the same actors, In the Summers, spends its time on four specific periods with different actresses playing the female roles. This shift is somewhat understandable given that by the fourth act the girls are roughly twenty and twenty-two years old. Like most adolescents, they become less interested in what dad wants to do and are clearly dealing internally with their own lives and senses of self. Violeta, in particular, goes from a baseball wearing long-haired girl to a mature, short-haired lesbian.
All of this is fine except that the changing actresses barely resemble the younger versions of their characters. In a couple of cases, the visible differences are rather startling. It was no doubt a difficult choice for writer/director Alessandra Lacorazza to handle their development in this way and without shooting over several years as Linklater did, there’s almost no other way to deal with those advancing teenaged years. Still, while the actresses are each very good, I’d have liked to see more consistency in their physical traits.
The film is divided into chapters representing the various summers the girls spend with their father. However, it is not always clear exactly how many years have transpired between these visits. Outside of the physical and emotional changes surrounding the girls, we can only surmise that a couple of years pass in each case. Residente as Vicente looks pretty much the same. The actor generally plays the character pretty warmly. He is clearly missing his daughters while they live with their mother and wants to put on the best face possible. Interestingly, mom is barely referenced to and never seen in the film.
What is perhaps most interesting is the growing gap between Vicente and the girls. They are obviously changing but what is actually happening within them is basically withheld from viewers. We can only read into whatever their inner issues might be. This may be another flaw of the film. There really isn’t much deep conversation between the characters. There also really isn’t much of an emotional catharsis that occurs, which might be realistic given the ages of the girls but it leaves the film a bit dramatically lacking for audiences. There is almost no humor here either leaving a rather static feel within the film. Still, it is nice to see Violeta’s burgeoning sexuality being treated, for the most part, in a general matter of fact way.
Las Cruces is depicted as rather desolate and economically depressed. Going with this, there are many quite beautiful long shots which emphasize the loneliness the girls experience while there.
In the Summers is not going to light your world on fire but it is a nice slice of life over the course of several years and the growth of the female characters is treated pretty realistically.
In the Summers won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. It is now available to rent/buy on Amazon Prime.
FILM: IN THE SUMMERS
DIRECTED BY: ALESSANDRA LACORAZZA
STARRING: RESIDENTE, SASHA CALLE, LIO MEHIEL
RATING: 3 out of 4 stars
By Dan Pal
In the Summers focuses on two sisters from California as they spend their summers with their dad Vicente in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Vicente is played by Grammy-award winning rapper Residente. He’s got a shaved head, multiple tattoos, and a seemingly big heart. He’s also a bit reckless causing some less than welcome adventurous moments with his daughters. When we first meet them, the girls, Violeta and Eva, are pre-adolescent. They have a solid relationship with their father as they spend their time playing pool, hiking, and hanging at a local bar.
The time-spanning narrative in this film might remind some of Richard Linklater’s great Boyhood. However, while that project was shot over some sixteen years with the same actors, In the Summers, spends its time on four specific periods with different actresses playing the female roles. This shift is somewhat understandable given that by the fourth act the girls are roughly twenty and twenty-two years old. Like most adolescents, they become less interested in what dad wants to do and are clearly dealing internally with their own lives and senses of self. Violeta, in particular, goes from a baseball wearing long-haired girl to a mature, short-haired lesbian.
All of this is fine except that the changing actresses barely resemble the younger versions of their characters. In a couple of cases, the visible differences are rather startling. It was no doubt a difficult choice for writer/director Alessandra Lacorazza to handle their development in this way and without shooting over several years as Linklater did, there’s almost no other way to deal with those advancing teenaged years. Still, while the actresses are each very good, I’d have liked to see more consistency in their physical traits.
The film is divided into chapters representing the various summers the girls spend with their father. However, it is not always clear exactly how many years have transpired between these visits. Outside of the physical and emotional changes surrounding the girls, we can only surmise that a couple of years pass in each case. Residente as Vicente looks pretty much the same. The actor generally plays the character pretty warmly. He is clearly missing his daughters while they live with their mother and wants to put on the best face possible. Interestingly, mom is barely referenced to and never seen in the film.
What is perhaps most interesting is the growing gap between Vicente and the girls. They are obviously changing but what is actually happening within them is basically withheld from viewers. We can only read into whatever their inner issues might be. This may be another flaw of the film. There really isn’t much deep conversation between the characters. There also really isn’t much of an emotional catharsis that occurs, which might be realistic given the ages of the girls but it leaves the film a bit dramatically lacking for audiences. There is almost no humor here either leaving a rather static feel within the film. Still, it is nice to see Violeta’s burgeoning sexuality being treated, for the most part, in a general matter of fact way.
Las Cruces is depicted as rather desolate and economically depressed. Going with this, there are many quite beautiful long shots which emphasize the loneliness the girls experience while there.
In the Summers is not going to light your world on fire but it is a nice slice of life over the course of several years and the growth of the female characters is treated pretty realistically.
In the Summers won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. It is now available to rent/buy on Amazon Prime.