Saving Grace

breezy living: Mona (Natalie Press, left) and Tamsin (Emily Blunt) go for a ride.

A cross-class lesbian romance spawns dreams of small-town escape.

My Summer of Love

by Cindy Fuchs

Bored and pouty, Mona (Natalie Press) wants out. Cooped up in the small Yorkshire village where she's lived all her life, she's uneasy with her ex-con brother's decision to close down the family pub in order to host Bible meetings. When Phil (Paddy Considine) declares that he's found religion in prison, it looks to Mona like another one of his cons, and more precisely, another bid to control her movements (their parents are dead). She knows she's not having it, but the 16-year-old — inexperienced, engaging and only starting to comprehend her own sensuous powers — is unsure how to resist.

So Mona is making some discoveries of her own. She's spending the early days of her summer vacation lolling about in a nearby meadow, smoking cigarettes and gazing up at the sky, dreaming of the escape she'll make once she's old enough. Pawel Pawlikowski's My Summer of Love begins as Mona sees what seems to be an urgent, thrilling and utterly magical means of escape: a literal knight on a horse. Appearing to hover over Mona during one of her lovely afternoon reveries, this savior looks down on her and asks if she's all right. Stunned, Mona asserts that she's only resting; she didn't faint or "crash or something." And yet she is about to be crashed, when she squints to get a closer look at this dazzling rescuer. Her name is Tamsin (Emily Blunt).

As they walk together, Mona walking her bicycle and Tamsin her horse, they seem to share an immediate rapport; as sheep bleat and the sun lowers behind them, the girls enter into a relationship that seems to surprise them both. Elegant, well-read and privileged, Tamsin invites Mona to stay in her palatial home while her parents are away. At first, Mona is excited just to be out from under Phil's trompy feet ("I want the old Phil," she cries to him. "He wanted to be real"). But soon she's also moved by the experimentation available with Tamsin — with regard to drugs, sensuality and sex.

Their romance is alternately fluid and jaunty, partly a function of cinematographer Ryszard Lenczewski's nimble hand-held camerawork, and partly due to Pawlikowski's affection for documentaries (which he made before directing fiction films); his first fiction feature, 2000's Last Resort, had a similarly rough and agile look. Where that film used another offbeat romance to astutely examine class, sex and national identities in a global economy, My Summer of Love pushes inward to get at similar concerns. Mona's yearning for an ideal object of affection has more to do with her needs and fantasies than with Tamsin per se, though Tamsin fills the space made available to her, narrating her own life story to accommodate Mona's yearning.

Mona's turn to Tamsin involves a typically and wildly romantic education. Tamsin introduces her to Piaf and Nietzsche, and plays Saint-Saéns on her cello. There's also a bit of Ouija board mysticism and some dire emotional bonding over Tamsin's own sad past — her beautiful sister Sadie, she says, died horribly from anorexia, turning into "this monster" in her final days, "throwing up all the time" and traumatizing the family. This specter of a frightening body only seems to enhance Tamsin's own attractiveness — at least for Mona, who is increasingly smitten by her perfection, her passion and her generosity. When Tamsin hears that Mona's been dumped by the local married man with whom she's been having joyless sex, she becomes Mona's champion. "How'd he shag you?" she asks, titillated. "Let me show you," Mona says, demonstrating about 30 seconds of mounting and moaning. "Men like that ought to be castrated," Mona announces. Though Tamsin devises a considerably less drastic "lesson" for Ricky (Dean Andrews), her gallant assumption of Mona's cause cements their connection, especially for Mona, who's grown accustomed to feeling used and inferior.

As the film takes up Mona's perspective, Tamsin remains oblique, even as she proclaims her fierce attachment: "We must never be parted," she insists during an evening of mushroom-taking and earnest lovemaking, "If you leave me I'll kill you." Mona is elated at such dedication; Tamsin appears precisely the savior she envisioned. Of course, Phil sees Tamsin as a predatory, even sinister, figure — she fits his worldview as adroitly as she fits Mona's. Phil sees that she might fulfill or undo his latest project, the erection of a giant scrap-metal cross on a nearby hilltop, which he hopes will "bring love to this valley."

Each member of this threesome is obsessive in his or her own way. When Phil literally locks Mona in her bedroom in an effort to "save" her, she begins drawing Tamsin's portrait on her wall. This image — colored chalk on the rough-hewn surface — showcases Tamsin's eye as Mona perceives and needs it: a means to see herself reflected, her brother refracted, and her desire embodied before she had even quite imagined it.

My Summer of Love Adapted and directed by Pawel Pawlikowski A Focus Features release Opens Friday at Ritz 5 recommended