From 25 August in Italian cinemas with Movies Inspired Summer days (Summerland), an independent drama set during World War II in the United Kingdom. The film is about a lonely writer, played by Gemma Arterton, who has to take care of a boy evacuated from London. She slowly begins to form a bond with him as she retraces her own life and remembers her long-lost lover of hers. The film is described as an “intensely emotional story about the endurance of love in troubled times”.
Plot and cast
The official plot: Alice (Gemma Arterton) is a fiercely independent folklore scholar who isolates herself in her cliff-top studio to debunk myths by using science to disprove the existence of magic. Consumed by her work, but also deeply lonely, she is haunted by a love story from the past. When lively young Frank (Lucas Bond), a London bombing evacuee, is placed in her irritable care, her innocence and curiosity awakens deeply buried emotions in Alice. By courageously embracing the miraculous unpredictability of life, Alice learns that wounds can be healed, that second chances exist, and that perhaps magic does indeed exist.
The film also stars Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Motherless Brooklyn, A Wrinkle in Time), Toby Osmond (Game of Thrones), Penelope Wilton (Shaun of the Dead, Downton Abbey), Amanda Root (Meet the Robinsons), Siân Phillips (Dune), Dixie Egerickx (The Secret Garden) and Tom Courtenay (The Aeronauts, 45).
Summer days – trailers and videos
Official trailer in original language released on July 14, 2020
Official original language clips released on July 28, 2020
Official Italian trailer released on August 22, 2022
Curiosity
- Days of Summer is written and directed by first-time British director Jessica Swale, an Olivier Award-winning playwright who made her directorial debut with this film after making a handful of short films.
- This is the second time that Penelope Wilton and Tom Courtenay have worked together in a drama set during World War II, after Guernsey’s Book and Potato Peel Pie Club (2018). However Wilton only appears in scenes set in 1975, as an older version of Gemma Arterton’s character.
- Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Penelope Wilton had already appeared together in the film The girl in the painting (2013).
- The film is produced by Guy Heeley and Adrian Sturges. Gemma Arterton, James Atherton, Emma Berkofsky, Hugo Grumbar, Tim Haslam, Zygi Kamasa, Jan Pace and Natascha Wharton are executive producers.
Production notes
Set in the 1940s, 1920s and 1970s and shot along Sussex’s stunning coastal views and villages, SUMMER DAYS is Jessica Swale’s directorial debut, bringing her original screenplay to the big screen. The acclaimed playwright won an Olivier Award for her play Nell Gwynn, in which film actors Gemma Arterton and Gugu Mbatha Raw starred. Backed by a BAFTA scholarship, Swale had the opportunity to develop an entire project from scratch. “They asked me: what are the issues that are close to your heart? What is the movie that you have never seen and that you think should be in the cinema? I thought, “Well, I really want to write about fantasy and hope. I want to make a film that people can like ”. I wanted to make a film that had an important message about open-mindedness and how innocence, truthfulness and simplicity can actually simplify all our prejudices and preconceptions ”. Focused on the love story between two women, Alice and Vera, the film examines the deep themes of faith, spirituality, loss and beliefs related to the “Summer Land”, a conceptualization of the afterlife that has long been used in paganism. “The Earth in summer is a pagan idea about the meaning of heaven,” Swale explains. “It is an idea of a place that exists next to ours. And the idea that one can communicate between the Earth in summer and normal life by leaving marks or altering the boundaries is something that is not specifically pagan, which is borrowed from a number of many different myths and legends. Rather, it is about what the Earth in summer represents: the possibility of something beyond and of something magical ”. While she delved into the big themes of the film, her father died. “I lost my father when I was almost done writing the film, which seems really strange, because when I started writing I didn’t know he was sick. Yet this has been the theme from the very beginning, and that’s why the film is in a sense for him ”. “He loved the simple things in life. He loved nature, walking and taking pictures of mushrooms. The mushroom seed (which appears in the film) is meant to be a reference to him. SUMMER DAYS is something that has to do with this, the hope that there is something that binds us to everything that has been before in all these people ”.
Who is Jessica Swale?
Jessica Swale is a theater director, playwright and artistic director of the Olivier Award-winning Red Handed Theater Company. She recently hired among the directors of the TV series Ten PercentJessica was named by Variety as one of the British personalities to watch in 2019 and named “Best Young Costume Comedy Director” by The Guardian for her work Nell Gwynn who won Best New Comedy at the 2016 Olivier Awards. “Nell Gwynn” explores the life of one of the first female actresses, Nell Gwynn (played by Gugu Mbatha Raw), since she was a
vendor of oranges until she acted on the stage and her life as an escort to the King. Recently Jessica wrote and directed the television short Leading Lady Parts (2018) with Tom Hiddleston, Amelia Clarke, Gemma Arterton and Gemma Chan. “Days of Summer” is her first feature film, based on an original screenplay she wrote after being one of the five recipients of the BAFTA scholarship reserved for screenwriters. Jessica’s first comedy, Blue Stockings, defined by Independent as “a lively and enlightening play, it debuted at Shakespeare’s Globe Theater in 2013, to great critical acclaim and garnering her a nomination for“ Most Promising Playwright ”at the Evening Standard Theater Awards. The play explores the traumatic experience of the first women to be admitted to Gurton College in Cambridge in the 1980s. A cinema version of this piece is currently in development. Among other theatrical works we remember All’s Will That Ends Will for the Bremen Shakespeare Company, Germany, Thomas Tallis for the Sam Wanamaker Theater at the Globe, the adaptations of Sense And Sensibility And Far From The Madding Crowd for Watermill e The Secret Garden for the Chester Open Air Theater. She created the Red Handed Theater Company, which won the Peter Brook Award for Best Ensemble Cast in 2012. For Red Handed, Jessica earned an Evening Standard Theater nomination for Best Director for The Belle’s Stratagem in 2012. In 2010, Jessica became the first woman to direct an opera at Shakespeare’s Globe Theater with Bedlam by Nell Leyshon.
The soundtrack
- The original music of the film is by the German composer and pianist Volker Bertelmann Oscar nominee for soundtrack of Lion – The way home. Bertelmann’s other credits include music for Edison – The man who enlightened the world, Attack on Mumbai – A true story of courage, The Old Guard, Ammonite, Stranger aboard and the tv series Rosa’s name.
- The soundtrack also includes the songs: “Concerto for flute, harp and orchestra in C major, K.299 (K.297C), II. Andantino “ by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and performed by the musicians of the National Symphony Orchestra – Jean Kelly, Fiona Kelly, Laura Custodio, Ariel Lang, May Dolan and Pedro Silva / Artistic director – Justin Pearson; “Romantic prelude” by George Frideric Handel, arranged by Gerhard Kanzian and Krassimira Ziegler; “Where’s That Rainbow” Written by Lorenz Hart & Richard Rodgers and performed by Frank Black & His Orchestra, Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Gemma Arterton; “Tiger Rag (instrumental)” by Tony Sbarbaro, Nick LaRocca, Edwin B. Edwards, Henry Ragas and Larry Shields performed by Benoit Viellefon & His Orchestra.
TRACK LISTINGS:
1. Miss Lamb 1:05
2. Tell Your Mother That 0:53
3. The Sailors Saw Something 1:18
4. I Know Just the Place 1:13
5. They Are the Same Shape 1:44
6. A Tower With a Green Flag 1:41
7. Building a New Plane 0:42
8. A Lake and the House 1:33
9. Turret Hunting 1:46
10. Well Then Another Time 1:16
11. What Do the Stars Have in Store? 2:17
12. We Just Had the Telegram 3:29
13. Please Don’t Do This 1:32
14. It’s Just a Story 2:01
15. His Mother’s Son 1:54
16. Say Something 3:31
17. He Could Be Anywhere 1:25
18. Air Raid 1:27
19. I Didn’t Know How to Tell You 1:25
20. There 0:55
21. Saving Frank 1:17
22. Our Way of Saying Goodbye 1:41
23. Unexpected Arrival 2:35
24. In Search of Summerland 4:30
25. Summerland End Credits 6:14
The soundtrack of “Summer Days” is available on Amazon.
Photos and posters
Days of Summer: Italian trailer and previews of the film with Gemma Arterton