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My Summer of Love
A film poster for My Summer of Love
Directed by	Pawel Pawlikowski
Produced by	Chris Auty Chris Collins Emma Hayter Tanya Seghatchian David M. Thompson
Written by	Helen Cross (novel) Pawel Pawlikowski Michael Wynne
Starring	Natalie Press Emily Blunt Paddy Considine
Distributed by	ContentFilm (UK) Focus Features (USA)
Release date(s)	October 22, 2004 (London)
Running time	86 min.
Language	English
Budget	~£1,700,000
IMDb profile

My Summer of Love (2004) is a British film written and directed by Pawel Pawlikowski. Based on a novel by Helen Cross, My Summer of Love explores the relationship between two young women from different classes and backgrounds. Working-class Mona (Press), whose once-hotheaded brother (Considine) became a born-again Christian in prison, meets upper-middle-class Tamsin (Blunt) who suffers from a lack of love in her family. Filmed in West-Yorkshire largely in the beautiful country surroundings of a small town, the film displays a sun-dappled innocence illuminating Mona's relationship with Tamsin. The movie went on to win a BAFTA.

Contents 1 Cast 2 Plot 3 About the film 4 Memorable quotes 5 Trivia 6 See also 7 External links

• Natalie Press as Mona (aged 24 at time of filming)
• Emily Blunt as Tamsin (aged 21 at time of filming)
• Paddy Considine as Phil
• Dean Andrews as Ricky
• Michelle Byrne as Ricky's wife
• Paul-Anthony Barber as Tamsin's father
• Lynette Edwards as Tamsin's mother
• Kathryn Sumner as Sadie

The film's opening is set in the beautiful countryside of Yorkshire, and reflects the main premise and theme of the film. Two girls meet for the first time when Tamsin(Emily Blunt), a manipulative, rich girl suffering from parental neglect, rides into a field on horseback and chances upon Mona (Natalie Press), a simple working-class girl, while the latter is resting in the grass. Opposites attract as both girls come from vastly different backgrounds and meet under very different circumstances - the former is from a posh, upper-middle-class family and is under suspension from boarding school for being a bad influence, while the latter, bored with her mundane life, comes from a dysfunctional family, her recently-released prison convict brother, Phil (Paddy Considine), being her only living family member. The new acquaintances set off together, one on horseback and the other on a sputtering scooter.

The film then cuts to when Mona arrives home to find her brother in the pub-cum-home that was once run by their mother. He is removing all the alcohol from the pub, as he has undergone an extreme religious transformation during his stint in prison, and this is part of his preparation for a rally for Christian converts. This corresponds with the film's themes of breaking away from old confines, youthful hope and excitement, risk-taking, new experiences and a sense of positivity for new beginnings and how all this, being short-lived, eventually culminates into a loss of innocence during a summer of self-discovery where much is learnt.

The film takes a dramatic turn when Mona meets her lover that night, whereupon they have sex in his car right before he breaks up with her. A disgusted Mona is then left alone in the parking lot. The next day, Mona arrives at Tamsin's just as Tamsin's father drives off, in order to escape from the rally organised by her brother. The girls begin to develop an unusual bond as they spend the day drinking and smoking while talking about the problems they face in their lives. Their sharing brings to light several of Tamsin's family secrets, such as the fact that Tamsin's sister Sadie died due to anorexia, as well as her father's extra-marital affair.

The next day, Tamsin takes Mona to the place where her father is cheating on her mother with his secretary. They smash a window of his car and run away, after which the bond between the girls grow stronger, and Mona agrees to spend the night in Tamsin's house, as unsurprisingly, Tamsin's parents are not at home. Left unattended to, the next day begins with Tamsin purchasing an engine for Mona's scooter, after which they drive to a small river to swim. The friendly feelings between them have now escalated into sexual tension, and the girls share their first kiss while in the water, fully clothed. This inevitably results in the two girls having sex for the first time later that night in Tamsin's bed.

The next day Phil invites the girls to his rally, in which he wants to erect a large cross on the hill next to their village. The girls go and join the born-again Christians on their way up the hill. Tamsin is immediately attracted to Phil during the course of the rally.

Later that day Mona and Tamsin go to a dancehall where they behave intimately, disturbing the mostly older patrons and prompting the bouncer to kick them out. They then go back to the river where they kissed in and declare their eternal love to each other, solemnly swearing that they would kill each other in case one leaves the other.

In the morning Tamsin wakes by the river with a cold, and the girls leave to breakfast at Tamsin's house. Phil then arrives at Tamsin's house searching for Mona, whereupon Tamsin pretends to seduce him. He reacts and attempts to kiss her, but she laughs him off insultingly, sparking his fury and violence as he grabs Tamsin by the neck in his fit of anger. He proceeds to forcibly ground Mona, forbidding her to see Tamsin. Mona refuses to give in to his demands, and something in Phil snaps when he finally comes to see the loyalty Mona has towards Tamsin. He then kicks the born-again Christians out of the former pub, while Mona leaves the pub determined to start a new life with Tamsin.

However, Mona realises her foolish idealism when she arrives at Tamsin's and discovers that Tamsin is to return to boarding school. Mona also belatedly uncovers Tamsin's deception - Tamsin's sister Sadie had never passed away or suffered from anorexia, as this was a lie fed to Mona as part of Tamsin's idea of summer fun. Mona, feeling dejected at the fact that she has been taken for a ride, leaves for the girls' special spot at the river. Tamsin finds her there and tells Mona that it should have been clear from the start that their relationship was doomed. They then slip into the water fully clothed again, re-enacting the earlier kissing scene. Mona uses this opportunity to fulfil her earlier oath, and her loving attentions become desperate attempts to drown Tamsin. She leaves her work undone, however, to cries of rage from a shocked and spluttering Tamsin.

The film ends with Mona walking away purposefully, hardened, determined and content despite the betrayal she had just endured.

When Pawlikowski started to work on the film it took him quite some time casting the two lead actresses. The overall casting procedure took about 8 months. Pawlikowski was searching in schools, universities, theater groups and public castings. He first discovered Nathalie Press's outstanding talent, but he still had to find her counterpart and so held some workshops together with Press and Considine. During this process he finally found Emily Blunt, and felt her to be the ideal Tamsin. The chemistry between Press and Blunt was perfect right from the start and they first did a tryout with the "Piaf-dancing scene", which worked out perfectly. Pawlikowski already knew Paddy Considine, a well known British actor, from their earlier collaboration, Last Resort, and had cast him as Phil.

The film was shot during the span of 5 weeks after some intensive location-scouting by Pawlikowski. The script only contained 35 pages and was far from being complete. The whole script was a kind of work in progress. A lot of scenes and dialogue were improvised while shooting, with a lot of participation by the actors. A perfect example for this kind of working method is the scene where Mona draws a portrait of Tamsin on the wall of her room. During Pawlikowski's travelling together with Press, he discovered that she used to do a lot of drawing while she was thinking. So he decided to integrate it into the movie and made a scene out of it. The whole shoot was done on location in Todmorden during the hottest summer Yorkshire had seen in 50 years.

My Summer of Love is often mistaken as being nothing more than a 'coming of age' movie, or as a film purely focussed on homosexual relationships. There are further themes on display: the character of Tamsin, in particular, presents a façade, and shows how someone's experimental pretense can lead to catastrophic results. Moreover it is a film about the obsessive love between two teenage girls: the naive, honest and full of passion Mona and the dishonest and abusive Tamsin. Both girls have their share of problems: Mona feels increasingly cut off from her newly religious brother, and she feels lonely and bored by her dull teenage life with no hope of a better future, while Tamsin is well educated with rich parents and with a beautiful house to spend her summer in. Tamsin's sense of abandonment from her absent parents has been masked by these rich trappings: her father is cheating on her mother with his secretary and her mother is often away. Just like Mona, Tamsin wants to escape from her constrained life, and together the two girls can flee their realities and experience a dream. Mona enjoys the music, literature and philosophy Tamsin introduces her to, and Mona allows Tamsin to revel in the performance of being someone completely different from her regular life. Tamsin can do things she never could do without Mona, but while Mona naively believes the summer could last forever, Tamsin knows the end will come, and she plays a deadly game with Mona's feelings.

The performances of the leading actors have been widely acclaimed, with trophies from the Evening Standard British Film Awards and the London Critics Circle Film Awards, and Pawlikowski's unconventional style of directing has been rewarded with a BAFTA for Best British Film, the Michael Powell award for Best British Film at the Edinburgh Film Festival (where the film had its world premiere in 2004), along with many nominations across the British Independent Film Awards and the European Film Awards.

P. Pawlikowski:[1]

“

Both Natalie and Emily were extremely different and very original, which is a rare thing nowadays. They avoid the obvious, and are capable of playing complex and conflicting attitudes. Above all, they had energy, which is key for a movie. When I brought them together for a workshop, I could see them feeding off of each other well, and I knew that this was going to work.

”

Tanya Seghatchian (producer):[2]

“

Pawel has a European sensibility. Whilst he's working with British subject and landscapes, he is much more interested in the essence of things- rather than the usual obsession with class and surface of contemporary life. He has mixture of lyricism and humor and a love of paradox and mystery which set him apart from the rest of British filmmaking, particularly the social realist tradition.

”

The novel with the same title My Summer of Love by Helen Cross only served as some kind of blueprint for the film. Whereas the novel pays a lot of attention to the social background of England in the 80s (where it is set), Pawlikowski reduced the book to its essentials and focused on the relationship between the girls. Most of the characters in the novel were left out in the film and the character Phil was invented and added by Pawlikowski. In many interviews Pawlikowski said that he was not interested in portraying typical teenage life in England, but he wanted to give the movie a certain timeless feeling.

Pawel Pawlikowski:[3]

“

[...]If you wanted to make a film about British teenagers it would be... well, it wouldn't interest me, let's put it like that. They'd be listening to music I hate, watching TV all the time, and talking about Big Brother. I needed to remove it, to get to the essence of adolescence without the paraphernalia of today. In a way I am arrested in my adolescent emotions, like most of us I think are, so [the film is] very personal, funnily enough, despite it being about two girls. I identify with Mona to an unhealthy degree [laughs], so the main thing was to make these teenagers the sort of teenagers I could relate to myself, slightly more timeless and removed from now.

”

In Tamsin's mansion's garden Mona and Tamsin sit on a bench and talk about their future lives:

Tamsin: "So what are you gonna do with your life?"

Mona: "I'm gonna be a lawyer...I'm gonna get a job in an abattoir, work really hard, get a boyfriend who's like — a bastard, and churn out all these kids right, with mental problems and then...I'm gonna wait for menopause,...or cancer."

• The score of the film was written by Goldfrapp and the movie theme is a variation of the Goldfrapp song "Lovely Head", which is the first song of their 2000 album Felt Mountain.
• Earlier in his career, Pawel Pawlikowski did a documentary on born-again Christians in Yorkshire. The experiences he made back then influenced the character Phil.
• Emily Blunt is listed in the credits as the performer of "The Swan" by Camille Saint-Saëns. She plays the cello in real life.

• New Queer Cinema

• My Summer of Love at the Internet Movie Database
• Official US website
• Film trailer at Apple.com