SUMMER a film by Colette Bothof ! Anne is sixteen and lives in a remote village in the Southern Netherlands. A forgotten spot where the seemingly endless fields are dominated by the omnipresent power plant and where electricity cables criss-cross the sky and never stop humming. Anne’s circle comprises her family and ‘friends’ – or rather classmates and kids from the surrounding villages, all adolescents heading for adulthood. In the week they cycle to school through the fields into the wind. At the weekend they race along dike roads or go boating in the river. The mood is sultry as hormones chum around !their bodies. Anne is a bit of an outsider and through her eyes see the young people whose lives are closely !linked to hers. It’s a small village and everyone is connected to everyone else. During this sweltering summer, Anne starts feeling lonely and detached. That is, until she meets Lena, who is new in town. Lena rides a motorbike and wears leather gear and is obviously different from everyone else. They meet at the fuel station where Anne works in the weekends. Anne quickly develops feelings for Lena, but they are feelings that she cannot fathom. However they are so intense that she can’t turn and walk away from them either. In the local bars and clubs she looks for Lena, just as Lena turns out to be looking for her. Love unfolds in all its tender !awkwardness. Things come to a head one evening when Anne and Lena, having finally found each other, leave the village disco together and head to the meadow. They are followed, mocked and insulted by the !disco crowd. However, this only strengthens their love. By the end of the summer a chain of events causes the group of friends to disintegrate and !everyone goes their own way. “Summer” is a film about growing pains, about young people craving for independence while also !needing to fit in. ! !‘Summer’ - director's statement ANNE is a 16 year old, quiet and rather inconspicuous girl. At the beginning of the film she, in her own words, "lives in her brother's wake". She grows up in a working class environment, in an isolated countryside area dominated by the local electricity plant. Not only do its giant masts mark the surrounding landscape, but the plant also plays a pivotal socio-economic role in the relatively closed village community, if only because all the men work there.! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! In ‘Summer’ Anne looks back on the summer in which everything changed, the period in her life in which she was transformed from a natural insider of the community to a sudden outsider through her love for 'import girl' Lena. This coming of age drama tells the story of Anne's growing up among her family and friends, of her step from puberty to adulthood, and her changing perception of her surroundings. Through a subjective voice-over Anne shares her thoughts and emotions, and draws the audience into her emotional development. ! Theme and genre By choosing for Lena, Anne, who has always 'belonged' in the village, suddenly becomes an outsider. At a certain point the way the villagers treat her is exactly how she and her friends used to treat other outsiders. Even though Anne's choice for Lena is of major importance for Anne's development, we do not consider ‘Summer’ a lesbian coming out film. After all, Anne does not experience her homosexual feelings as problematic. Our central focus is on growing up and away from a sheltered, familiar life, and choosing one's own way. ! ! Anne does not flee to the anonymity of the big city, but stays in her village, accepting the consequences of her love, because in her own way she is connected to the area where she was born and bred. Anne's perspective is the leading point of view of the film. But her development is not an isolated one. She is part of a close, and rather closed, circle of friends and family, who have been important to her all her life. Each person in this circle is part of the bigger story. Together, they form the story of the group versus the individual who breaks away. In this sense ‘Summer’ is a kaleidoscopic film. The stories of the other characters are connected with Anne's story in the way village youngsters are connected to each other. An event in one person's life has immediate impact on that of the others. Escaping this rule requires strength, character and maturity. Anne's (future) identity is determined by how her !ability to stand apart and rise above (the morals of) the group and her surroundings. ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Arena ‘Summer’ takes place in a closed countryside community, an environment with its own rituals, rules and habits. The protagonists live their lives under the smoke of the power plant, which is often present in the picture as an overpowering force. And even when invisible, it still holds a major influence in the protagonists' lives. Big city mentality and globalization have not reached the village yet. The villagers live isolated from the rest of the world, without being aware of their isolation. They form a close-knit community, and do not need outsiders. ! Anne's environment and that of her friends is a working class environment. Not rich, not intellectual, not sophisticated. One could almost consider them 'the underbelly of society'. At the same they are not 'white trash'; their pavements are swept, their furniture is polished. Sometimes it seems like time has stood still in the village. Countryside habits, mentality and morals are still very much present and rule people's interactions. To the fathers it is natural that their lives centre around the power plant, in service of it. The mothers are all housewives, and hardly able to control their growing children. Partying, hard drinking, smoking: it is the order of things. After all, the grown-ups drink and smoke plenty as well. It is the rule, the routine. The protagonists are all slightly too young for their actions or the events happening to them. Too young to drive, too young to drink so much, too young to have babies and marry. Still, it all takes place. Even though ’Summer’ contains very few references to the story's exact location, the film in the Biesbosch (a countryside area in the south of Holland), under the smoke of the Amercentrale, a Dutch power plant with a cooling tower and a maze of electricity masts dominating the idyllic landscape, visible to all surrounding villages. The landscape of the Biesbosch plays an important role in the film, not just esthetically, but almost as a character in the film. The Powerplant is like an almighty figure controlling the life of the local people. The film's theme, coming of age, breaking away from one's nest, is a strongly universal, timeless one. The story takes place in the here and now, but the choice of its arena, a religious countryside village, provides a timeless setting, enabling us to make it a bit larger than - !contemporary - life. Style and form In its one and a half hour screen time ‘Summer’ contains quite a few violent events: the rape of Ruby, the abuse of aunt Door, the horrific car accident; far-reaching moments in the lives of the protagonists and in that of Anne. There is nothing gentle about the way characters treat each other, and the environment is not a very stimulating or beneficial one to adolescents growing up. However, the tone of the film is never very dark, in particular because of Anne's voice-over, which at times has a wonderfully sobering and contrasting effect. This is one of ‘Summer’’s great strengths: the film does not moralize or strive for political correctness. It has a light-heartedness and humour, which forms a welcome contrast to the violence of events. At no point is the film an indictment of the ugly circumstances in which the youths in question grow up. Rather, it breathes optimism and celebrates the flexibility of people meeting with !adversity and the cards dealt by fate. ! The main character Anne too believes in "a natural order of things". She never looks at the others from a position of superiority and does not moralize. To her, falling in love with another girl is a blissful revelation. It is only the other's reactions that are problematic. For herself, she !does not consider it as good or bad. It just is. On various levels ‘Summer’ is a film of contrasts. There is the constant tension between realism and poetry, beauty and ugliness, both in respect to the protagonists and their behaviour, as to the surroundings they find themselves in. There is the power plant, in discord with the idyllic landscape, the humour which wryly contrasts with the seriousness of many of the events, the vastness of the landscape versus the intimate closeness of emotional events, and the naturalness with which Anne accepts her homosexual feelings as opposed to the rejection of the people surrounding her. The visual style of the film emphasize these contrasts, to create a heightened reality. This style also finds its motivation in the distance with which Anne observes her own life. The barren ugliness of certain locations near the plant, are emphasized and opposed with romantic and stylized images of the idyllic landscape. Cosy, dynamic, warm sequences oppose cold, static sequences. Sometimes this contrast is present within one and the same shot. Beautiful !landscape will often be 'ruined' by the presence of the power plant.