The Beautiful Summer is awash with beauty – from the visuals, the gentle and entrancing score, even to its beautiful young cast. Yet, for all of the tenderness and intricacies that director Laura Luchetti fills her film with, it never scratches enough under the surface to make the impact you desperately want it to.

Seventeen-year-old Ginia (Yile Yara Vianello) left the countryside in 1938 Italy and moved to Turin with her brother Severino (Nicholas Maupas). Ginia, the forever optimist, excels as a seamstress at an atelier but is restless. Soon, she meets the enigmatic model Amelia (Deva Cassel), who takes her further into her artist friend circle. Swept in Amelia’s spell, Ginia soon finds herself in a world of self-discovery.

A tale as old as time, The Beautiful Summer is about a young woman from the country who meets someone from the city. Their world is flip-flopped upside down as she falls astray into the more liberal and open world. The film could easily be another one-note film offering us nothing of value other than appreciating the beauty of Italy in the late 1930s.

However, filmmaker Luara Luchetti wants to delve a bit more emotionally than that. For the most part, she succeeds with ease. We see a young woman in Ginia (played tremendously by Yile Yara Vianello) see the beauty in things and, importantly, the possible beauty in things. She sees a dress and knows exactly what to add to it to finish it off as the perfect piece. An easy example of her trepidation in not acting like those around her who are a few years older than herself is that she doesn’t smoke and has no interest in it. It’s almost a purity that some of those older, more creative characters that she has been pulled into like about her.

She is full of curiosity, though, and most of that stems towards Amelia. She doesn’t want to be Amelia per se, but she wants to feel that confidence that Amelia has in herself, even if it is something that is entirely unobtainable at this point in her life. Sure, she can walk the same path as Amelia. However, she won’t ever be her. She is in a constant fight within herself to grow as a person, potentially far faster than she needs to, because she sees what it could be like. Similar to that dress, she improves. She wants to impulsively take that step and be that “perfect” version of herself. But as she learns with the wedding dress she has been tasked with making, by focusing on the end goal, you lose your way in the present.

Luchetti has made some interesting narrative choices here. As mentioned, they do work well throughout The Beautiful Summer. It is a moving film, especially in the latter third. But, it simply never delves enough emotionally for us to properly connect to the story. We want it to be swept away as Ginia has with this new world she has found thanks to Amelia. Instead, there is a predictability to the film that squanders the opportunity to be something more. This slant to melodrama is rather needless as the story that Luchetti was already telling was more than enough to appeal to audiences. In fact, it caused the film to lose its way just when it was beginning to dip deeper into the characters.

What makes the film stand out as much as it does is Yile Yara Vianello. She is as impressive as Ginia. You buy into her as she lights up the more she feels noticed by those around her who use their talents to see and paint beauty. Instead of being the one to create the beauty, she is being seen as the beauty, and that is an intoxicating spell for which to fall. Her best moments are, in fact, the unspoken ones. The delight and, at times, the nervousness of Ginia radiates off Vianello, even when she meets her first truly disappointing moment in her dalliance with the artist Guido (a moment that is probably very universal). We see it all very plainly on her face. Without a doubt, she marks herself out as a talent to watch out for with The Beautiful Summer.

Equally, Nicholas Maupas, as Ginia’s brother Severino, is terrific here and has his own story that pulls you in. Someone who is attending University has gotten too caught up with earning money for himself and his sister. He is thoroughly fed up with city life. He is also a big brother who is worried about the path his sister could be going on. So, when Ginia comes home far too late on her birthday, we see the heartbreaking image of her birthday cake and present left out on the kitchen table by Severino. So bogged down by trying to be traditional, by earning money for his family to live on when in the city, he forgot to have fun; he is young too, after all.

With Deva Cassel as Amelia, we have an interesting character. She has an almost thankless task in that if you are not observant, she has to play the free young artisan who is living the life that many her age dream of. She is doing what she wants and being gorgeous while doing it—only for something we could see a mile down the road coming to throw her world askew. There is a thoughtfulness to Cassel’s performance that pulls those emotional chords effectively, even when lumbered with that needless story.

The Beautiful Summer is a lush, moving, slow-burn film that does almost everything right. It celebrates women through a strong yet delicate female gaze; you just wish it was stronger. Regardless, there is a lot going on underneath the surface of Laura Luchetti’s film to compel.

The Beautiful Summer is on Film Movement Plus or via Amazon Prime Video.

★★★ 1/2

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