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One Deadly Summer
Director: Jean Becker
130 minutes (18) 1983
Nouveaux retail
Review by Steven Hampton

Fine performances and assured direction make this romantic-comedy thriller one of the better French dramas of its era. Isabelle Adjani is stunningly sexy here as a village beauty plotting revenge on the local men she suspects of a 20-year-old sex crime...
   One Deadly Summer (aka: L'Été Meurtrier) starts off warmly enough with a string of excellent character sketches, mostly centred on the emotions of lust, envy and resentment stirred up by Adjani's arrival in a close-knit community. Vivacious, flighty, pouting, but undeniably a woman of mystery and - in the end - perplexing depth, Adjani adeptly plays the determined, then confused, ultimately tragic, heroine Eliane with little attempt to soften the spiteful sexpot character, thereby alienating certain US critics - despite the fact that, eventually, we come to realise that, although markedly delusional, young Eliane may have good cause to feel so strongly.
   One of Adjani's most remarkable talents is her ability to portray girls/women of almost any age. She demonstrates this only twice, here, and then only briefly (see the hospital scene at the end), but has proven an aptitude for such mannered acting time and again in other productions. In One Deadly Summer, Adjani plays a character ten years her junior yet, astonishingly, she looks the part as well as acting it - with a wild child belligerence.
   What makes this drama so engrossing is the way its intricate backstory (based on a novel by co-scripter, Sebastien Japrisot) is slowly uncovered by means of different viewpoints - changing the film's generic appeal, as it progressively turns darker. Just when you think there can't be any further surprises in store, along comes another twist. Sudden narrative lurches aside, there's heaps of wonder in Adjani's malicious intrigues, and the amusingly unpredictable reactions of the family she marries into as part of her scheme.
   This is a very welcome re-release reminding us how great an actress Adjani is when she's given good material. It's such a shame that she failed to make much of an impression outside Europe, despite memorable roles in such varied movies as Truffant's intelligent romance The Story Of Adèle H, Polanski's brooding horror The Tenant, Walter Hill's underrated crime thriller The Driver, Herzog's visually striking Nosferatu remake, Merchant/Ivory's decedent Quartet, Besson's highly energetic Subway, Zulawski's intense Possession, and Nuytten's commendable biography of sculptress Camille Claudel. Perhaps it's best not to mention Adjani's part in Hollywood's contemptibly un-ironic remake Diaboloque, or Beatty and Hoffman's ruinously flaccid Ishtar. Oops, too late. Adjani's lack of success in tinsel town may, I think, be seen as a blessing because the English/international versions of her movies rarely play as well.
This video release is in French with English subtitles.

DOWSE Guide to the Movies is compiled by Tony Lee editor of Pigasus Press
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