The Summer Book (STAR) - Victoria Film Festival

The Summer Book (STAR)

Venue Star Cinema Sidney
Director Charlie McDowell
Length 90 mins
Rating Not Rated (19+ Screening)

The Summer Book (STAR)

$14.29 Plus Service Fee

# of Tickets
  • VFF 2025

Showtime:
8-Feb 2:00 PM Star Cinema

The Summer Book 

Comforting + Delicate + Nostalgic 

Director: Charlie McDowell 

UK USA Finland / 2023 / 90 min / Drama 

Synopsis

It has taken a long while for Tove Jansson’s novel, The Summer Book, to be adapted to screen. The memoir, from Finland’s famous writer of the classic Moomins books for children, offers a deeply personal account of an elderly artist and her six-year-old grand-daughter who spend a summer together on a tiny island in the Gulf of Finland. As the two learn to adjust to each other’s fears, idiosyncrasies, and desires, a fierce but understated love emerges, that becomes more expansive than the island itself. The memoir is layered with subtextual emotions and sadness, and written with a sparse anti-sentimentalism that perhaps explains why the wait for a screen adaptation has been so long. Thankfully, Charlie McDowell’s film adaptation, starring a vibrant Glenn Close, approaches the source material with profound delicacy, and the film is imbued with Jansson’s characteristic lightness of touch, managing somehow to evoke deep emotion. 

 In the wake of her mother’s death, Sophia (played by impressive newcomer Emily Matthews), her grandmother (Close), and father (Anders Danielsen Lie) spend a summer on an island off the Gulf of Finland. Many of the narrative’s key dramatic events have happened outside the frame of the film. Instead, the audience is gently invited into the peace of personal processes – grief, growth, patience – amidst the life-giving embrace of a beautiful natural environment. In this sense, the film is without high drama or tension. Instead, McDowell offers a near meditative reflection on family bonds, growing up, and understanding deeply, which is warmly faithful to Tove Jansson’s delicately beautiful approach to storytelling. – JD