‘My Summer of Love’

On the surface, “My Summer of Love” seems like a movie whose only angle is featuring a lesbian couple, half of which has a cockney accent. After some time though, it becomes very clear that the film is not about that at all; it is about the difference between storytelling and lies. The story follows Tamsin, a posh girl who literally rides into the film on a horse, and Mona, a girl whose face screams “country bumpkin.” Bored with their summers, they lose themselves, forming a strong relationship with each other, each idealizing the other’s life for its foreign quality. They learn about each other: Tamsin frequently discusses her grief over her sister dying from anorexia, Mona about her brother “finding God” and using their family’s old bar as a religious gathering spot. It soon becomes clear, however, that they’re not being completely honest with each other, and that they can’t hide from the real world forever.
—Candice Bautista, Editor

‘American Beauty

“American Beauty” depicts a family in which the father has a midlife crisis reminiscent of “Office Space” that takes a dark turn, a wife who is overly obsessed with the idea of success to the extent she cannot see anything else but success and a daughter who, in teenage fashion, wants breast implants and wants to feel popular and loved. There is not one happy point of the film—just glimpses of optimism that only feel worse in the long run when the audience has the realization that the film isn’t meant to be happy.
Lester Burnham, the patriarch, snaps one day and decides he will quit his office job to pursue the simpler things in life, from flipping burgers at the burger joint to smoking joints with his teenage neighbor. Though this seems like an uptick to his life, his decisions eventually lead the other two members in his family to react negatively, which eventually leads to his realization that these new decisions may make his life seem better, but don’t actually improve anything around him.
—Candice Bautista, Editor