Writer: Mads Lind Knudsen and Sylvia Le Fanu
Director: Sylvia Le Fanu
Entrant into the first feature competition, Mads Lind Knudsen and Sylvia Le Fanu’s delightful My Eternal Summer puts a family under strain when mother Karin chooses to spend her final weeks at the family’s summer house by the sea. With tones of Merchant Ivory infusing the rich landscape of hill walks and cliff-top views, telling this story from the perspective of Fanny, Karin’s 16-year old daughter, adds vibrancy to the visuals and a darker quality to the story as Fanny shies away from the reality of her mother’s cancer and the influence it must invariably have on her life.
Arriving at their summer home, Fanny quickly finds the atmosphere stifling, clashing with her father and causing concern for her weakening mother. Needing distractions, both her boyfriend and best friends come to visit briefly and then Fanny seeks a job to avoid being alone with Karin But the pace of her illness means time is precious and Fanny is unprepared to face what’s coming.
The Eternal Summer is a strong and well-paced debut from Le Fanu who manages the contrasting experiences of the story with skill and sensitivity. Moving frequently between the lovely countryside where a calm lays over the story and the frailty of her mother dominates, to the more exciting nights out in clubs and bars, or at the café job in the nearest town which give a different quality to the film. These contrasts between the middle-aged people’s life and the fast, intense culture of the younger characters is well presented, drawing attention to the duality of Fanny’s experience and the audience’s shifting perception of her.
The impression of Fanny is particularly well drawn and Knudsen and Le Fanu maintain quite a fine balance between her motivation being an inability to cope with such adult experiences alongside a deep-rooted selfishness that makes her sometimes hard to like, continually unwilling to focus on her mother or even to go to the hospital when additional care is needed. Even My Eternal Summer’s ambiguous end – a tracking shot that finds Fanny in the crowd at her new college – is telling; has life moved on already, did she ever care or will the intensity of grief and loss hit her down the line? The writers leave us guessing.
With strong performances from Kaya Toft Loholt as Fanny, Maria Rossing as the dying Karin and Anders Mossling as the less featured by notable husband and father, the unfolding palliative summer feels like a major pause, a time when life is on hold waiting for an end to come. Of fun, but also anticipation, captured in Le Fanu’s layered and well-pitched first film. My Eternal Summer is a strong competition contender and a stake in the ground for Le Fanu’s emerging career.
My Eternal Summer is screening at the BFI London Film Festival 2024.
