In a much-clipped moment from his Criterion Closet video, philosopher and cultural theorist Slavoj Žižek pulls a DVD copy of Louis Malle’s Murmur of the Heart from the shelf and remarks upon it warmly as “one of those nice gentle French movies where you have incest.” Žižek’s enigmatic comment springs to mind watching Endless Summer Syndrome, the feature-directing debut of Iranian director Kaveh Daneshmand––primarily because the film delights in upending every other word in that iconic sentence.
Lawyer Delphine (newcomer Sophie Colon) enjoys a pleasant country life with her husband Antoine (Matheo Capelli) and their two adopted children, Adia (Frédérika Milano) and Aslan (Gem Deger, who co-conceptualized the story). Aslan is preparing to leave to study in New York, and the family are spending a few final picturesque days at home together by the pool. Then the phone rings. A colleague of Antoine’s confides in Delphine that her husband spoke, in an end-of-work-party stupor, of having had illicit sexual relations with one of their children. Delphine’s world, and the frame itself, freezes. Cue title card.
Endless Summer Syndrome is an enticing proposition, marrying Michael Haneke’s sharp dissections of the family unit with the pop sensibility and Oedipal hang-ups of Xavier Dolan’s early-career Cannes triumphs. Cedric Larvoire’s glossy 4:3 cinematography captures the tightening picture frame of the family home splendidly: all day-lit halls and open doorways, private spaces leaking into communal ones, unthinkingly encroached-upon and blurred.
The film is distributed here in the U.S. by Altered Innocence, a label focusing on coming-of-age tales queer in both senses of the word; this year saw a breakout success of The People’s Joker. Endless Summer Syndrome is a savvy acquisition for them, fitting neatly alongside their recent François Ozon box set.
This is an unusual case of the choice in distributor proving a slight spoiler, but resultant preconceptions will likely mislead. Endless Summer Syndrome’s sensationalist central hook is a Who Killed Laura Palmer-esque smokescreen for a sensitive exploration of family “role-playing” and the murky waters of conflicted desire and familial love. In a year that saw the release of not one, but two excellent French-language arthouse dramas broadly exploring incest (the other being Catherine Breillat’s knife-twisting Last Summer), Daneshmand’s film has the edge.
The cast is uniformly convincing in their roles (and in the roles that their characters are in turn playing), but this is Colon’s film and, incredibly, her first major film performance. Cutting a sympathetic balance between Huppert-esque iciness and the embittered maternity of Anne Dorval, she’s a mesmerizing screen presence with total control and command of the frame whenever she enters it.
Which makes it all the more gripping to discover that her character lacks that control. Delphine and the viewer are invited to look for cracks in the family photo with a forensic, Fincher-esque eye, but the truth proves slippery. The inevitable, remarkably simple reveal at the film’s midpoint is arguably Endless Summer Syndrome’s least-interesting. It’s what that shift in turn unravels––the other players’ jealousies, relationships, desires, and splintering self-image––that truly captivates and intrigues.
While perhaps a little too in-love with its own clever construction to explore its characters’ psyches to the fullest depth, Endless Summer Syndrome is a compellingly subversive concoction that dares raise uncomfortable questions with no easy answers. Take a sip––it’s refreshing.
Endless Summer Syndrome is now in limited release.