THE SUMMER HOUSE
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1994 Scott Renshaw
Starring: Jeanne Moreau, Lena Headey, Joan Plowright, Julie Walters, David Threlfall. Screenplay: Martin Sherman. Director: Waris Hussein.
In retrospect, my responses to THE SUMMER HOUSE seem very confusing. I did laugh at this lightweight British comedy; in fact, I laughed quite a lot. At the same time, I found myself wondering why I wasn't enjoying it more. THE SUMMER HOUSE is full of quotable one-liners, spirited performances and good intentions. It also never quite adds up to a satisfying film. At just under 80 minutes, THE SUMMER HOUSE leaves some characters sketched in only the broadest of strokes, and burdens the humor with an unnecessarily dark and cumbersome story structure.
Based on the writings of Alice Thomas Ellis, THE SUMMER HOUSE tells the story of Margaret (Lena Headey), a young Croydon woman whose marriage to Syl Monro (David Threlfall) is rapidly approaching. The small problem in this scenario: Margaret not only doesn't love Syl, she doesn't even like him. Coming off a tragic relationship abroad, Margaret is cornered into the engagement by her well-meaning but old-fashioned mother Monica (Julie Walters), and believes there's no hope for backing out. Enter Lili (Jeanne Moreau), an old friend of Monica's visiting for the wedding. The vibrant and uninhibited Lili becomes Margaret's confidante, and together with Syl's mother (Joan Plowright) resolves to see to it that the marriage never takes place.
Nearly everything that works in THE SUMMER HOUSE is thanks to Moreau and Plowright. Yes, they are given good lines by screenwriter Martin Sherman (the stage play BENT), but the real success is in the interpretation. Moreau is mischievous and full of energy, bordering on over-the-top but just managing to keep the reins on Lili. She is given most of the sharpest dialogue, and she uses it to paint a picture of a woman moving into her later years with a continued lust for life, but one who never comes off as an arrested adolescent. Plowright's Mrs. Monro is generally more subdued, lamenting that "in some cultures, the elderly throw themselves off ice floes when they're no longer of any use; unfortunately, there are no ice floes in Croydon." She's really quite a lonely and unhappy woman before a drinking binge with Lili allows her to rediscover a sense of fun, and a purpose in preventing the disastrous marriage. These two fine actresses are extremely entertaining, and THE SUMMER HOUSE might be considered worth seeing simply for their performances.
The characters surrounding them aren't quite so worthy of attention. Although ostensibly the centerpiece of the story, Margaret is really very poorly defined. It's never entirely clear what part the factors of her mother, her ill-fated Egyptian romance and her desire to become a nun respectively play in her actions and decisions. Lena Headey is a fresh face, but for the most part that face is a frown, and she never develops beyond her melancholy. Even more caricatured is Syl, a womanizing oaf nearing middle age while still living with his mother. David Threlfall, who resembles Monty Python's Eric Idle while playing one of his unctuous game show host characters, really hasn't got much to do but leer and be slightly off-putting, and his character makes the situation much more ridiculous than it needs to be. Even Julie Walters, a very good actress, is wasted in the role of Margaret's mother. There was clearly a great deal of time spent giving these characters funny things to say, but not nearly as much making them real.
Even more distracting than the absence of real characters is the absence of a coherent plot. THE SUMMER HOUSE is comprised largely of snippets of witty conversation, funny in their own right but never moving towards anything. The details of Margaret's affair are revealed in distracting flashbacks, and the entire issue of the marriage seems sometimes to be in the way of the characters quipping. There are also some disturbing undercurrents--intimations of child abuse, an unexplained violent death--which seem grossly out of place and entirely unnecessary. Ultimately, I can give THE SUMMER HOUSE a mild recommendation because of the laughs it provides, but I was disappointed by the unrealized potential for something a bit more human.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 bad marriages: 6.
-- Scott Renshaw Stanford University Office of the General Counsel
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