Good summer cinema is the one that captures its tiny pleasures, but the best is the one that also deals with its ending; the farewell to that specific state of disconnection, availability for curiosity and discovery, and warmth. These five films talk about it, each in its own way, and help face the transition from our relaxed summer self to the harsh and angular routine.
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‘Do the Right Thing’. Spike Lee, 1989
The trope “characters at their limit during a heatwave” dominated American fiction between the fifties and seventies, from Tennessee Williams to ‘West Side Story’, from ‘Dog Day Afternoon’ to ‘Chinatown’: prime time for short sleeves. Spike Lee revived it in the eighties with more force than ever. Under a granite sun, this hard drama has so much life, euphoria, and passion that it seems that, yes, this is how you survive August.
‘Mr. Hulot’s Holiday’. Jacques Tati, 1953
If an excuse is needed to return to Hulot, here is one: the ending (spoiler alert) (the film is 73 years old, just so you know) is perhaps the most powerful end-of-summer in cinema, with that immediate nostalgia for something we have not yet finished living, the cherry on top of a masterpiece about the pleasure of resting (in a hotel, here) when the opportunity to do so is so fleeting and the desire so eternal.
‘Knife in the Water’. Roman Polanski, 1962
What do you feel surrounded only by water? Peace? Terror? Heat? Roman Polanski explored all the facets of the most summery of scenes in his debut film. A direct influence on ‘The Talented Mr. Ripley’, it takes place almost exclusively on a sailboat and contains so many emotions (and brilliant shots and frustrations for its protagonists) that, when it ends, there is nothing left to idealize about the last months.
‘Y Tu Mamá También’. Alfonso Cuarón, 2001
Ignoring Žižek, who said the important thing in this ‘horny road movie’ was the political allegory, we can see here the peak of the genre “summer freed us and now I know who I really am,” alongside ‘Almost Famous’, ‘Spirited Away’, or ‘Strange River’: aside from allegories about the PRI, the film allows us to remember, better than most, the pleasure of letting go when there is no reason to resist.
‘A Bigger Splash’. Luca Guadagnino, 2015
When the filmmaker most sensitive to the lights, rhythms, and pleasures of summer (‘Call Me By Your Name’, ‘We Are Who We Are’) made his first display of strength, in this remake of Jacques Deray’s ‘La Piscine’, he proved that vacation cinema is more sensation than information; more atmosphere than plot. Here, the atmosphere is composed of all the perfect elements: wealthy foreigners in rural settings, unresolved sexual tension, and that post-summer doubt about how much of what we thought we felt will come home with us.
