The LDS-theme film "Once Upon a Summer" has a familiar and welcoming
vibe to it, one that might remind viewers of LDS films gone by.
Based loosely on a true story, the feature film explores the bond
between cousins who were best friends as children and who are brought
back together when they're faced with challenges in adulthood.
As adults, Andy and Lisa live very different lives, with Andy being a
career-driven, mother of two going through a divorce, and Lisa being a
doting mother who finds out early in the film she is dying of cancer.
Audience members who have seen actress Heather Beers in the film "Charly" can't help but feel the familiarity in her role as Lisa, who
like Charly is a character dealing with terminal illness. The story is
fresh enough and strong enough for that link to not serve as a
distraction, however, and is more of an afterthought.
The bulk of the film is spent in flashbacks to the summers Andy and
Lisa spent as girls with their grandparents. The actresses that play
young Lisa and Andy are talented and expressive and are responsible for
most of the film's comedy. The pair has a great on-screen friendship,
which includes several humorous scenes in which they terrorize the
neighborhood through toilet-papering and beating up on neighbor boys.
The film, which was shown in a screening at the LDS FILM Festival last
week, alternates between scenes of the adult Andy and Lisa reminiscing
about their childhoods, and flashbacks to those memories. At times
there are flashbacks within flashbacks so the viewer almost forgets the
struggles the grownup Lisa and Andy are undergoing. Some of the scenes
from the past relate to their adult conflicts, but with others, the
relation is a bit of a stretch and can be almost distracting.
Such is the case with one of the more memorable scenes from the film
involving the ghost of a young boy. Initially, the inclusion of the
scene seems like a device the director put in to show the girls'
relationship with their grandfather, who teased them about there being
a ghost at the pond they frequent. But when the ghost shows up, the
film's plot is put on hold while the script goes on a long tangent
where the girls talk to the ghost, and try to find his body.
The scene is shot well, and is pretty scary, with much of the audience
getting audibly startled at one point. But the purpose it serves in
telling Lisa's and Andy's story is eventually lost on the viewer.
There's an attempt to relate it to the plan of salvation, but it's
pretty feeble, and doesn't justify the several minutes it required to
tell.
What really sticks with the viewer in "Once Upon a Summer" is the way
in which the director juxtaposes the carefree scenes from the girls'
childhoods with the harsh realities of their adulthood. Shots of lively
young girls playing on rope swings and running barefoot are paralleled
with harrowing scenes at doctor's offices and cemeteries. Such pairing
creates a resonating mood of both nostalgia and heartache in the viewer.
Like many LDS-theme movies, "Once Upon a Summer" likely will have the
strongest effect on a Mormon audience — which will relate best to the
sweetness shown in scenes of the girls' baptisms and .
That's not to say that the characters are stereotypical or predicable.
Neither of the girls come from what some might consider traditional
Mormon families. Their fathers are irresponsible, and the girls'
grandmother spends much of the movie smoking cigarettes, wearing a muumuu and flirting with young missionaries.
It was clear that the screening audience at the screening last week was
full of relatives and friends of people involved in the movie. And
people in different sections of the theater could be heard whooping and
yelling each time a new credit cross-faded onto on the screen.
The film wrapped up production just a few weeks before its debut at the
film festival, and will be distributed by Candlelight Media in fall
2009.