Perth Voice Interactive

THE Beautiful Summer is a sensitive portrayal of a lesbian coming-of-age experience in Fascist pre-WWII Italy. 

“Freely inspired by” the 1949 novel by Cesare Pavese, the story is of a naïve country girl moving to the big city, Turin. 

Against the vague and undeveloped backdrop of Mussolini’s war preparations, the Penguin teaser says about the book: “Ginia is desperate for adventure. So begins a fateful friendship with Amelia, a stylish and sophisticated artist’s model who envelops her in a dazzling new world of bohemian artists and intoxicating freedom.

Writer-director Laura Luchetti’s adaptation is beautifully filmed with exquisite art direction. 

Turin of 1938 is perfectly realised. 

The architecture alone deserves its own credit and the music (except for one startling, 2008 selection) is era perfect. 

Also creditable is Luchetti’s choice to steer the film’s same-sex plot line well clear of soft-focus lesbian voyeurism.

The tough life of working-class Italians under Fascism, where all the workplace power was in the hands of the boss is shown. 

Ginia (Yile Yara Vianello) is a 17-year-old toiling as a seamstress in a prestigious fashion house under the proprietor’s hawk-like gaze. 

Her brother similarly experiences the precariousness of the blue-collar existence. 

They get by with simple meals, modest entertainment and confined living quarters.

Yile Yara Vianello is meant to portray the ecstasies, agonies and confusion of adolescent love on the cusp of adulthood. 

Deva Cassel, as the young but worldly-wise Amelia, introduces her to an avant garde artists’ circle where free love and hard drinking are the accepted morality.

Restrained

However, given the restrained performances and the absence of background narrative, the audience must accept at face-value that Amelia is intrigued by the unsophisticated Ginia and that they both find each other attractive. 

Italian male sexual technique is displayed as purely wham-bam-thank-you-mam, pushing and shoving, panting and heaving self-satisfaction. 

As a cinematic condemnation of sexism, it is excellent. 

But why would Ginia have ended up in this stinking bed to begin with? 

We fail to see any “intoxicating freedom” here.

The IMDb movie information site gives 27 “Plot keywords” for The Beautiful Summer. 

Among them are “woman poses nude for a painting”, “female full-frontal nudity”, “clothed male, female naked scene”, “female pubic hair”, “sex scene” and “male rear nudity”. 

In amongst those shards there is a story waiting to be told that does not quite form itself and the viewer must decide if there is enough in the acting, scenery and relationships to sustain interest. 

The Beautiful Summer
St ALI Italian Film Festival
Screenings at Palace Luna
Leederville, Raine Square,
Windsor Theatre and LunaSX
Tix: italianfilmfestival.com.au

by BARRY HEALY