Tove Jansson’s 1972 novel The Summer Book was not a memoir, but a piece of memory—its lean account of largely unspoken grief and recovery imbued and enriched by the author’s palpable feelings for the remote Gulf of Finland. The island setting, where she herself kept a holiday cottage. That it has taken more than half a century for such a beloved book to reach the screen is not entirely surprising: this level of authorial connection beneath the text makes it a challenge for film, as does ostensibly low-stakes spare storytelling. In his fourth film, American director Charlie McDowell makes an equally respectable and dignified stab at the task, capturing some of the sun’s wistful, gentle warmth in Jansson’s writing – though not quite matching its modest poetic depths.
The presence of Glenn Close – who radiates gentleness and calm as a weary grandmother anchoring a potentially traumatic family holiday – will be the main selling point of “The Summer Book” as it makes its way into the world after its world premiere at the London Film Festival. festival. But this is not a film in thrall to star power, or indeed any cinematic bells and whistles: a late-summer thunderstorm, briefly threatening but doing no final damage, represents the closest thing to a dramatic climax in screenwriter Robert Jones’s sincerely low-key film. Main adaptation. Some viewers will be frustrated by the plot threads in a film that seeks to evoke an atmosphere of inner calm rather than any kind of excitement. But loyal fans of Jansson, the Finnish author best known for her Moomin children’s books, will be glad that her delicate personal work has not been touched upon.
The film begins with a sense of crossing into another world, where time is slower and the days are longer, as the prow of a small wooden boat crosses the shimmering waters purposefully, far removed from urban reality. Above her lies nine-year-old Sophia (newcomer Emily Matthews), drinking in every moment, a sensitive, imaginative girl with an insatiable curiosity about her changing surroundings. Accompanied by her father (Anders Danielsen Lee) and mother (Claus), Sofia heads to a secluded beach shack that has been in the family for generations, where she has spent every summer of her short life thus far. But the whole thing feels eerily new and unfamiliar without her mother, who we believe died last year, and whose conspicuous absence no one knows exactly how to deal with.
Sofia’s father, a soft-spoken painter, withdraws into his work, pushing his feelings so deep into himself that his daughter begins to fear that he no longer loves her. In his relative emotional absence, Sofia’s grandmother is left to do the parental work, coming up with endless activities to keep the girl’s lively mind, and serving as a constant conversation partner, always ready to answer questions that range from the trivial to the geeky to the searching. There are no phones or computers here: the absence of this analog period is only prominently suggested in the film. The Nordic character’s knitwear, a must-have even on a summer’s eve, appears constant.
The grandmother, a matter-of-fact, self-sufficient type, at one point scolds her son scathingly for excessive self-pity, but she is always kind to Sofia – petting her flights of fancy and directing her toward playful distractions, but also encouraging the girl to solve her problems. Her own problems, upfront about the fact that she won’t be here much longer. With her distinctive attention to detail of tone and posture, Close plays this gentle yet powerful old bird beautifully, resisting shimmering sentimentality while maintaining a clearly affectionate relationship with Matthews, who is attractively troubled but not too precocious in her screen debut.
It’s Grandma’s moments with herself, smoking hand-rolled cigarettes on the porch at dusk or stumbling her way through the landscape through which she set out as a girl, with darker fears silently hovering over her face: fear of form, perhaps. From her beloved family when only two remain. However, as the summer progresses, gaping wounds begin to show, as father and daughter begin to truly see each other again — though the film, restrained until the end, refrains from any embraces or grand gestures of reconciliation. Danielsen Lee, who is always welcome on screen, gets fewer assignments than his co-stars, but the film relies heavily on his implied and reserved decency as an actor.
An unexpected departure from the slick work style of his previous films, most recently the new Netflix film Windfall, McDowell’s film doesn’t always find the spiritual resonance in such physical aspects that Jansson’s subtly haunting book finds: a new poplar planted amid the rocks, as a gesture of faith in the future, is palpable. As pathetic as things have become. In fact, “Summer Book” is a film mostly captivated by rocky, pebbled beaches, pine-covered carpets, and stone-covered skies, all of which are gorgeously photographed by the great Norwegian cinematographer Sturla Brandth Grovlin (“Victoria,” “Another Round.” ) in compositions that focus less on the overall postcard perfection than on the particular, tangible details of light and texture that color lifelong memories.