Perhaps the world is finally ready for a lesbian romance as direct and unapologetic as
Summertime, though this beautifully realized tearjerker works as well as it does in part because
the characters themselves don’t seem quite ready to follow through on the love they’re feeling.
Turning back the clock to the early ’70s, Catherine Corsini delivers a luminous, goldenhued
period piece in which a French farm girl (Izia Higelin) moves to Paris, where she falls for Carole,
a radical feminist (Cecile De France).
Smitten by Carole’s energy, Delphine starts to attend the feminist organisation’s rowdy weekly
meetings, where Carole mistakes her new recruit’s interest for belief in the cause, when in fact,
Delphine’s passions are of an entirely different nature. But she, too, has misread the situation,
for Carole may be doing battle against a maledominated system, but has an enlightened
boyfriend (Benjamin Bellecour) of her own at home. After breaking a gay friend out of an asylum
where he’d been sent to be “cured”, Delphine makes her move, and to her own surprise, Carole
agrees to experiment with intoxicating results.
Peter Debruge
Variety
