‘The Summer Book’ Review: Charlie McDowell’s Delicate Finnish Tale Gives Way to a Compelling Performance from Glenn Close | London Film Festival

An island out at the Gulf of Finland was a haven for Tove Jansson, author of the famous Moomin books. It’s a place she would come back to every so often, but when her mother passed away in 1971, she returned once again to that little corner of the world to find a salve for her grief, feeling inspired by the nature around her that she paid tribute to in her novel The Summer Book. 

Jansson’s book is certainly an interesting source material for a filmmaker like Charlie McDowell, who up until now, has worked in high-concept features to varying results: his directorial debut The One I Love is a fascinating marriage thriller, while Windfall falls flat in its homage to Hitchcock. The Summer Book is a radical departure in its sheer restraint. Light in story but heavy in mood, McDowell’s film allows the beautiful Finnish landscape to speak for itself in an evocative drama that finds life in death and death in life. 

Jansson’s treasured island paradise is recreated as a rickety wooden house that overlooks the Baltic Sea. It’s summer, but in typically Finnish fashion the chill weather still demands an extra few layers. Sophia (newcomer Emily Matthews) is already collecting seaweed by the seaside when her father (Anders Danielsen Lie) and grandmother (Glenn Close) first step inside the place where they’ll celebrate Midsummer. (Both characters are credited simply as Father and Grandmother.) The circumstances of their visit are slowly revealed, with the film preferring to luxuriate in the Scandi locale before sharing that the three are still freshly mourning the death of Sophia’s mother. 

Danielsen Lie, incredible in his work with Joachim Trier (The Worst Person in the World), is compelling in the limited time we spend with him. As Sophia’s father remarks, the “stink of grief,” is keeping others away, though his isolation is also self-inflicted. He dives into his work as an illustrator as a necessary distraction, but Sophia misinterprets his exile as disinterest. “He doesn’t love me anymore since she died,” she confides in her grandmother. 

Little happens in The Summer Book, which plays out in a series of sun-dappled vignettes. Sophia and her grandmother venture outside everyday — the younger with boundless energy and curiosity, the older carefully following not too far behind — and discover all of the island’s exciting corners and secrets. It all makes for languid, enriching viewing, akin to spending aimless days away from the world, but the film itself lacks a sense of direction. One tense scene set in the middle of a heavy storm momentarily shakes the film’s slow rhythm, but for better and for worse, McDowell gets swept up by an intoxicating, lazy summer.

What the film is missing in energy, it makes up for in the richness of its setting. McDowell and cinematographer Sturla Brandth Grøvlen capture Finland with intimate reverence: the camera floats across the moss and rocks that Grandmother touches, as if trying to retain the memory of the feeling beneath her fingertips. Sophia’s father plants new trees and lavender into fertile soil, creating new life while he still mourns. The all-encompassing sea reappears frequently: waves lap up on the shore of the island, steady like a heartbeat, while sunlight dances on the water. 

In contrast to the vibrancy of its setting, death permeates The Summer Book. “Everything is gliding away from me,” Sophia’s grandmother laments, reckoning with the end of her life in the place where she has spent so much time living to the fullest. As much as she tries to join Sophia in her adventures, her body prevents her from crawling and exploring like she did in her youth. One hazy evening, she lies in bed, stares up to the heavens above and crosses her arms as if trialing a coffin. Close avoids allowing the old-age make-up, dentures and her Finnish accent to do the heavy lifting, and in a film as delicate as this, the actress builds her character in a slow accumulation of quietly crushing details over any emotional bulldozer moments. Matthews serves as a sunny counterpoint to Close, bringing a joy and innocence to Sophia and her grandmother’s exchanges, which broach everything from religion to worms.

Even if Grandmother will soon leave, pieces of her will remain. She introduces Sophia to the “magic forest” that she spent her summers getting lost in, and the wooden sculptures she made that hide in the grass to this day. Sophia and her grandmother’s experience of the island is reciprocal in their education: when the latter forgets the feeling of sleeping in a tent, Sophia spends the night outdoors to relay the sights, the sounds, the smells — replenishing the memory that her grandmother had lost. If death is on the mind for all three characters, so too is life, and the idea that no one is ever really gone forever. There are remnants of us that remain in memories, and are imprinted in the natural world, from the spongy moss to the sound of wind flying through the trees. McDowell’s sumptuous film delights in soaking it all in.

Grade: B

This review is from the 2024 BFI London Film Festival. The Summer Book will next play AFI FEST but has no U.S. distribution at this time.