Our Eter­nal Summer

Our Eter­nal Sum­mer is the lat­est addi­tion to the ever-grow­ing canon of Euro­pean com­ing-of-agers, but one that adds an unex­pect­ed lay­er of emo­tion­al tor­ment to the well-trod­den genre. In French writer-direc­tor Émi­lie Aussel’s poised debut fea­ture the dream­i­ly tran­quil, crys­tal clear ocean of the Mediter­ranean town Mar­seille becomes a place of night­mares overnight.

In the sum­mer after high school exams but before uni­ver­si­ty, the insep­a­ra­ble Lise and Lola (new­com­ers Agathe Tal­rich and Mar­cia Feugeas) join a bunch of their friends to live out the sum­mer of 18-year-olds: lan­guid beach days are spent watch­ing the sun rise and fall with no care for the days blur­ring togeth­er. That is until Lola’s future is washed away when she agrees to one last evening swim. She plunges into the dark ocean abyss and nev­er resurfaces.

The numb­ness that comes with the sud­den­ness of grief is hard to visu­alise, and yet in Aussel’s still and dis­tant shots of the friends the fol­low­ing morn­ing, no words are need­ed to con­vey how they are cop­ing. That once con­fi­dent, youth­ful self-assured­ness they shared is now as secure as the sand that slips through their fin­gers. It is here, as shock per­me­ates the frame, that Aussel’s film begins its most inter­est­ing inves­ti­ga­tion: not only that of grief but how one rebuilds them­selves in the wake of loss.

Some of the group want to leave the town, while oth­ers refuse to get out of bed. But for Lise, Lola’s clos­est friend, the dev­as­ta­tion is all-con­sum­ing. She retraces her foot­steps to the beach where she observes oth­er hol­i­day­mak­ers con­tin­u­ing with their lives, infu­ri­at­ing­ly unaware of the knee-buck­ling pain that pierces her heart. To sur­vive, she sheds her old skin like a rep­tile, dis­tances her­self from her peers, and rids her­self of the reminder that she is miss­ing a best friend.

Anchored by Agathe Talrich’s qui­et­ly adroit per­for­mance, Aus­sel smart­ly utilis­es her lead actor’s vacant expres­sions as they suc­cumb to debil­i­tat­ing waves of grief. Aussel’s close-up shots of Lise’s dim­pled smile, sunkissed cheeks or her bit­ing back tears are har­row­ing, cap­tur­ing her pro­tag­o­nist float­ing in a sea of emo­tion with no con­trol over which way the tides will take her.

It is not only in close-ups where Aus­sel astute­ly taps into bereave­ment; the direc­tor also utilis­es doc­u­men­tary-like talk­ing head fram­ing where char­ac­ters sit before the cam­era in deeply reveal­ing con­fes­sion­als. Blur­ring the line between real­i­ty and fic­tion, Aus­sel hones in on what it is to lose some­one as an ado­les­cent in sequences that are stripped back con­cep­tu­al­ly but pack an emo­tion­al punch.

A piv­ot into per­for­mance art, includ­ing an attempt to per­form an exor­cism of sor­row, takes the wind out of Our Eter­nal Summer’s sails for its final act. They say time is the great­est heal­er, but with a 72-minute run­time where mem­o­ries of Lola are haunt­ing while the sun keeps shin­ing, the reflec­tive com­ing-of-age dra­ma feels both fleet­ing and slug­gish. I sup­pose that dichoto­my, too, is indica­tive of nav­i­gat­ing the end­less dimen­sions of grief.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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