THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – MUST SEE
This summer, the American teen movie saw a “woke” (term that qualifies someone as “awake”, aware of social or racial problems) of its software. Released a few months ago, Where we come from, by Jon M. Chu, showed the daily life of a Latin neighborhood in the process of gentrification. The film juggled between sweet romanticism and social anchoring, evoking, through musical numbers, discrimination, precariousness and community pride – in a way West Side Story (film which will soon have its Spielbergian remake). He brought up political consciousness in the midst of a genre that was by definition above ground, focused on emotional problems – but which, let us add, produced masterpieces. Following him, Summertime confirms the trend: that of a youth politicized, or at least tormented by the state of the world and eager to make it known.
Carlos Lopez Estrada (director out of the Disney team) is not satisfied with this sole observation, and tries to find a suitable form for it. The concept of Summertime was born from a workshop of spoken word (oralization of a text, halfway between poetry and slam) where each artist gives his intimate story a demanding, rhythmic and demanding form. Twenty-five young artists from this workshop make up the cast of the film, the principle of which consists of a long summer stroll through the streets of Los Angeles: like an onlooker constantly challenged and distracted, the film slides from a character to another.
Exciting sociological object
Each character has his own playlet, and each playlet inevitably provokes a moment of spoken word – written and recited by the actor himself. The great diversity of the cast makes it possible to evoke a wide spectrum of issues: homophobia, grossophobia, anti-Asian racism, painful relationship with his community, galloping gentrification, or more simply heartache, nostalgia for childhood, declaration of love to his city. The texts, like their recitations, are virtuosic and constitute more than mere stops in fiction – they are fiction itself.
The great diversity of the cast makes it possible to evoke a wide spectrum of issues
Summertime assumes its funny bittersweet tone, at the same time archi-sweet, bordering on the cutesy at its end, and at the same time eager to show that her youth does indeed have both eyes wide open, that she is articulate and, more than that, talented. In several places, the film appears as a fascinating sociological object, since it no longer shows a youth federated by rites of passage common to all, but quite the opposite: each one finds himself isolated in his particular experience and trauma, but all manage to come together in the name of an intersectional struggle that the film tries to stir up – here represented by the limousine which carries them all.
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