Movie Review: Summer 1993

Summer 1993 *** ½ / *****

Directed by: Carla Simón.

Written by: Carla Simón.

Starring: Laia Artigas (Frida), Paula Robles (Anna), Bruna Cusí (Marga), David Verdaguer (Esteve), Fermí Reixach (Avi), Montse Sanz (Lola), Isabel Rocatti (Àvia), Berta Pipó (Tieta Àngela), Etna Campillo (Irene), Paula Blanco (Cesca), Quimet Pla (Gabriel), Dolores Fortis (Carnissera), Tere Solà (Senyora Carnisseria).

 

Summer 1993 is a sweet and beautiful film, that deliberately meanders during its 99-minute runtime, much the way our memories of summers from our childhoods do. Days that bleed into each other, because you’re never doing very much of anything important – snippets of adult conversation you don’t really understand, the looming presence of school that is going to start soon. Summer 1993 is nostalgic for that time – but in a way that is slightly more clear eyed, because Summer 1993 is not about the best summer in the life of Frida, the six-year-old at the center of the movie, but the worst – even as it seems so idyllic to those of us in the audience. This is the summer her mother died, after he father has already died, and she is moved from her home in Barcelona, to a remote village in the countryside, to be raised by her Aunt Marga and Uncle Esteve. They have a three-year-old daughter themselves – Anna – who acts as Frida’s playmate, and plaything. Things here are so calm and peaceful – but that’s just the surface.

 

This is the type of film you can tell is based on the memories of the filmmaker – and so it is here, with first time director Carla Simon, telling at least in part, an autobiographical tale. Her approach here is more traditional than, say, Alfonso Cuaron’s approach in the upcoming Roma – he wanted to look back at the time period he grew up in from a more realistic point-of-view, not how he remembered it, but how it actually happened. For Simon, she wants to evoke what it is like to be that hurt, confused child who doesn’t understand everything that is happening around her – but understands enough to know that it hurts. Frida will do things in the movie that are impossible to justify – they are the types of things thoughtless kids (who all have a touch of sociopathy to them) do – but it comes from a place of pain we can all relate to. I’m not sure I really like the way Simon gooses the tension up a little bit in these sequences – there are few cheaper ways to induce anxiety in the audience than to put a child in jeopardy – but at the same time, it does break up the monotony of the film. There is a danger in this film meandering too much – and eventually, you do realize that some of this film is too dull, too repetitive. The danger of making a movie like this is that – that sometimes your memories aren’t as interesting to you as they are to anyone else.

 

Summer 1993 is a sad film, mainly because you watch it, and relate to everyone in it, and yet there is nothing to be done. Frida hears things she probably should not hear – and yet the concerns that Marga and Esteve have about her are real, and come from a place of love. The visits with her grandparents, and other family members that she knows better than the people now raising her, are both joyful and painful – because she doesn’t understand why they have to end.

 

That’s basically the bottom line about this film – Frida just doesn’t understand a lot of what she goes through, or why she has to go through it. She understands enough to be in pain, but not enough to deal with it. In many ways, it feels like this film is Simon’s attempt to work through that pain now as an adult, by looking at the kid who didn’t understand it all. It is a thoughtful, sensitive beautiful film – so much so, that you forgive it the occasional meandering and dullness that seeps into the film at times. It is a very promising debut feature for Simon.