Two friends, Grace and Asta, are running through a summer house with a bundle of burning sage. It’s to drive the evil spirits from the house, says Asta’a mother Kate. Asta’s showing Grace how it’s done, as they bless walls and windows, doorways and floors. Then, in a hallway, Asta stops and screams. There’s a dead rabbit on the floor. How it got there, or what it means, is anyone’s guess. Kate brings the body outside. But the spirit seems to linger.
That’s an early scene from Summer in the Shade, screened Monday night at Best Video Film and Cultural Center in Hamden. Alice Millar, the New York-based director of the film — as well as locally-based composer David Lackner and illustrator Gabrielle Muller, who are both Best Video members — were on hand to talk about the film with the robust audience who had gathered to watch it.
But first, they let the film speak for itself.
Summer in the Shade tells the story of Grace (Niamh Walter), the daughter of a London couple whose marriage is in trouble. Grace’s mother sends Grace away for the summer, where she can spend time with close friend Asta (Nyobi Hendry) and Asta’s mother Kate (Rebecca Palmer), who spend the warm months in a house in Cornwall. The bucolic setting is a long way from home. And things are changing between the childhood friends, as they’re both at the cusp of their sexual awakenings. For Asta, it’s a time of excitement. For Grace, sorting out her own feelings with the knowledge of her parents’ difficulties, it’s a time of confusion and dread. Things get more complicated when Sid (Zaqi Ismail), an affable but directionless young man, enters the picture, a companion to the girls and a possible lover for Kate. Add to these human relationships a thread of magic — spells that appear on the walls, dreams that might be real — and you have an eerie, compelling coming-of-age story that pulls you quietly yet irresistibly from scene to scene, as Grace discovers the power and danger of growing up.
Brian Slattery Photos
Millar.
“This is a movie I wanted to make for a long time,” Millar said. She has been working in film for over a decade, with seven directorial credits to her name and steady work as a cinematographer. The story grew from the seed of a memory from her own childhood in the United Kingdom. She and a friend built a fort in the woods, only to discover one day that a homeless man had taken shelter in it. The man was an invader, a threat, but even then, she said, “I knew he was more vulnerable than me.”
In 2013, Millar took her idea to Isobel Boyce, a writer she had known since college. Together they turned the idea into a story. Cinematographer Benjamin J. Murray helped them sharpen it into a 90-minute film and had a hand in creating the film’s romantic yet unsettling mood. Millar was inspired by previous films like The Virgin Suicides, Stealing Beauty, The Falling, War of the Buttons — “this mix of moody, feminine stuff and British childhood ‘70s BBC stuff,” she said. Murray grew up in upstate New York and “I knew he loved forests,” Millar said. “We used vintage camera lenses for a softer look.”
Summer in the Shade is particularly remarkable for the strong performances of its leads — Walter, who was 14 at the time the film was made, and Hendry, who was 13. “Niamh had been in a few big movies,” including 2016’s The Huntsman. Hendry, however, “had never done anything, but she was so quick, so intelligent. I hope she does more.”
Lackner.
Millar and Lackner met each other 10 years ago through a mutual friend and have been working together on various projects steadily ever since. By the time she approached him to score Summer in the Shade, they’d developed the shorthand that comes from constant collaboration.
“It’s just me,” Lackner said of much of the full, lush soundtrack of synthesizers and woodwinds. “I didn’t write out a score.” Instead, he wrote music directly to the film, which also features songs licensed from a variety of artists. For one part of the score, Lackner collaborated with a singer working under The Lady in Red Project; she sent him recordings of her singing, and he built the sound around that. “I used it as source material,” he said.
Millar financed the film through various European sources, having filmed it in the south of England (at her mother’s house; she credits the film’s existence for that, “since we had a place to shoot”). It has only been finished for about three months; a sales rep is currently looking for distribution in Europe.
“I just want people to see it,” Millar said. Given the audience’s reception to the film — from the rapt viewing to the questions that followed — that seems more than likely.
