Summerland Parent Guide

Alice Lamb (Gemma Arterton) is an unpleasant person. Summerland makes that clear from the beginning. She is casually cruel to a child at the grocer’s and treats the villagers in her seaside village with callous disdain. When she is informed that she must billet a child evacuated from war-ravaged London, she protests bitterly before reluctantly letting him in the house. When he asks what’s for dinner she puts raw chicken, egg, and potato on a plate and tells him to cook it himself.

Luckily, Frank (Lucas Bond) is irrepressible, with a zest for living and a sparkling personality. Alice’s feelings gradually soften and she reluctantly begins to enjoy Frank’s cheery enthusiasm, even allowing him to come along as she sets out to prove a theory. Alice is working on a thesis, and her topic is mirages, particularly the complex ones known as Fata Morganas. With Frank in tow, she sets off to a nearby bay in search of these natural optical illusions.

Seeking answers in the clouds feels like a distraction for a woman who’s haunted by images from the past. Years ago, Alice fell wildly in love with Vera (Gugu Mbatha-Raw). After an idyllic interlude, Vera left to pursue her own goals, leaving Alice broken and grieving. Her bitterness and tough practicality come through in her advice to Frank, “Life is not kind. Anguish is inevitable. Your heart will break. Your friends will die. You may even think of killing yourself. What matters is how you deal with it.” Alice has no comforting philosophy or religious belief to counter her bleak assessment of life. Heaven, she believes, is a fairy tale. But she spins Frank a story of Summerland, a pagan belief in a parallel world that surrounds us until it’s disturbed by a departed soul who wants to reach the living.

Obviously, Christian viewers will take issue with Alice’s opinions on religion. Otherwise, it’s difficult to assess the content in this film because it’s subjective. Summerland is the cleanest romantic drama I’ve seen in years with nothing more than yearning looks and brief kisses. Whether that qualifies as major or minor content depends entirely on your views on LGBTQ issues. Adults with contemporary attitudes towards sexuality will probably see this as a tender film about a relationship brought to a premature end. Parents with traditional views of sex will likely be unhappy with a movie that provides a sympathetic look at a lesbian relationship. Other content issues in the movie include minor swearing, brief visual and spoken references to World War II, and a few scenes of adults drinking alcohol.

Frankly, for me there are bigger issues to quibble over in Summerland. The first is the writing. This movie turns on a plot contrivance that was so sentimental and kitschy I’m convinced the movie can cause cavities. Anytime a movie relies on coincidences for its resolution, screenwriters are demonstrating a lack of imagination. Sadly, the lazy narrative arc isn’t the movie’s biggest issue – that honor goes to Alice’s lack of emotional discipline and its effects on Frank. Early on, her brisk cruelty towards a lonely child is hard to watch. Even when she begins to care for Frank, Alice is unable to put his feelings first, to force herself to do hard things for his benefit. At both extremes of their relationship, Alice’s selfishness hurts Frank – and that’s no mirage. Although the story shows that Frank is good for Alice, it’s far from clear that Alice is good for Frank. And shouldn’t a child’s life have a higher priority than serving as the catalyst for an adult’s change of heart?