Grief is something that is so individualised to our existence as human beings; we never know when it’s going to come or how we’ll deal with it. Does it hit us like a freight train, with every waking day being a fight against descending into absolute insanity, or do we continue in our lives solemnly? Maybe those feelings creep up on us once in a while, but mainly it’s little things like isolating ourselves more, diving deeper into work, or listening to those impulsive thoughts more commonly than usual.

Adapted from Tove Jansson’s novel, The Summer Book follows a deconstructed nuclear family consisting of “Grandmother” (played by Glenn Close), “Father” (played by Anders Danielsen Lie), and Sophia (played by Emily Matthews) as they spend time together in a family house on an island off the Gulf of Finland. As we spend time in their everyday life, we realise what’s missing, which is Sophia’s mother. The Summer Book dedicates its runtime to exploring their dynamics and how they can move past this loss and the rest of their lives.

The problem with The Summer Book is that, despite its good and rather uncomplicated intentions, it’s rather nonspecific to its characters and setting beyond visualisation. It has a slow and homely pace which is very respectable, along with sounds of waves lightly crashing and leaves blowing; the cinematography is beautifully weathered with 16mm film, making its actors look beautifully and naturally lit in its boxed-in vistas, but what are all of these technical things assisting, what is the story, what is the point? And unfortunately, it’s not much.

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The characters of Father, Grandmother, and Sophia never reach further than the expected archetypes of a typical indie drama. Father is quite closed off and focused on his work as an illustrator (for how much he neglects, we don’t know much about his work) while Grandmother replaces the maternal role left by Sophia’s mother, imparting wisdom, regret, and smart things because she’s old and knows a lot of stuff and Sophia remains curious, she’s lost but she’s trying to explore this new space in her life with her mother gone which leads to painstaking dialogue like: “Grandma, when are you going to die?”.

With the amount of time and intention, Charlie McDowell’s direction holds; there doesn’t seem to be any in the screenplay which often leaves a film rich with potential and frequently boring from moment to moment, even going to the length of providing heavy-handed exposition about the themes of the film rather than displaying any uniqueness in these characters which could’ve communicated the themes in a much more engaging manner. One could say, when you lose someone, it can feel quite lifeless, which is a fair point, but maybe I shouldn’t feel that way during a 90-minute film.

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This review was originally posted as part of our 2024 BFI London Film Festival coverage.

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