‘Glorious Summer’ Review: Helena Ganjalyan and Bartosz Szpak Create a Gilded Cage of False Freedom in Richly Lanthimosian Odyssey [B+] | SXSW

Glorious Summer is a well-lensed, intriguing odyssey into a sun-drenched hellscape. In its own way, it shows that much as life away from the commonplace horrors of civilization can be tempting, living in such isolation isn’t always paradise. A need to live away from everything and everyone lives within us and surely grows by the day for those of us living in the United States because we live in Hell. But when the physical and mental isolation and yearning to escape into the outside world begin taking its toll, whether it’s best to live alone gets called into question. 

The story of the fittingly titled Glorious Summer follows three women (played by Helena Ganjalyan, Daniela Komedera, and Magdalena Fejdasz-Hanczewska) who live like they’re on a continuous summer vacation within a wall-encased sanctuary. Every day is full of recreation and leisure, always aiming to find a wellness task to report to their unseen supervisor. But other things in their routine, like practicing how to die as a potential ticket to, as the women say, “another place” and a special touch language that the women use to communicate and say things they can’t speak out loud, underline the darkness beneath the balmy surface. 

The use of world-building with the touch language involving the women using palm and arm-stroking as coding methods for various verbal phrases and central characters living by their own principles that don’t align with societal norms speaks volumes. At times it recalls the earlier work of Yorgos Lanthimos, such as Dogtooth and The Lobster, possessing similar absurdist storytelling only without the characters speaking in trademark Lanthimosian deadpan. Just as the Greek maestro took his sci-fi concept in The Lobster to comment on the real-world pressures of being single, directors Bartosz Szpak and co-star Helena Ganjalyan depict women living in their own world that feels dystopian to comment on the state of women across the world being deprived of their autonomy. 

Because it’s mostly a woman’s voice that communicates with the three women and gives them instructions, Glorious Summer exemplifies how women are easily capable of upholding the patriarchal systems that deprive women of their freedom of choice. Although the voice’s identity remains anonymous along with the organization that is holding these women captive, the film’s dread still stems from seeing women simply having their free will affect more than why this voice and whom the voice works for are carrying out their ominous plans. While not on the same level quality-wise, it’s like with Ingmar Bergman’s 1968 war drama Shame, which doesn’t aim to be about a particular war but rather stresses the severity of war by dramatizing the casualties and emotional trauma that affect innocent civilians thrust into the heart of it. 

At times, Glorious Summer does become too much of a slow (sun) burn, including scenes of the women carrying out their everyday routine that feel like filler moments. But it’s still a slow burn that’s bound to linger by the time it ends. Initially, its concept of a system meant to suppress women of their autonomy without having a face or a name is affecting before causing the viewer to ruminate over whether life away from civilization is any less terrifying than life in it no matter how brightly the blinding daylight glistens within the film’s deceptively utopian landscape. 

Grade: B+

This review is from the 2025 SXSW Film and Television Festival. Glorious Summer is currently seeking U.S. distribution.

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Matt St. Clair

Matt is a New England-based freelance journalist who lives and breathes the world of cinema and has been an Oscar watcher since the age of eight. His writing can be found on outlets such as The Film Experience, Roger Ebert, Digital Spy, and Slashfilm. He is also a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic and a Gay & Lesbian Entertainment Critics Association member. You can follow him on Twitter @filmguy619. (He/They)

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