Summer In February

Directed by Christopher Menaul.
Starring Emily Browning, Dan Stevens, Dominic Cooper, Hattie Morahan.
100 mins
In cinemas June 14

Summer In February, an adaptation of Jonathan Smith’s period novel, commits a lot of sins. It’s a tortuously dull, production-line British drama with painful scripting, a plodding narrative arc, and really has no right to be shown anywhere except on bad TV one rainy Sunday afternoon. But the most loathsome feature of Christopher Menaul’s formulaic melodrama is its downright selfishness. One heartbroken character seems to keep cyanide on tap just to theatrically chug at pivotal moments – but not once offers to share it with the audience, despite the fact that we were clearly suffering more than she.
Assembling a veritable who’s-who of stiff upper lip dramas while attempting to evoke a soft-core ‘70s European atmosphere, Summer In February plays out like a bad episode of Downton Abbey set in a nudist colony – and no-one asked to see that. Through a Vaseline-smeared lens, Menaul looks at a love triangle in an Edwardian artists’ colony in Cornwall. Sucker Punch’s Emily Browning is badly miscast as the angsty Florence, whose marriage to The Duchess’ Dominic Cooper leaves Downton Abbey’s Dan Stevens looking even more mopey than usual, while Sense & Sensibility’s Hattie Morahan wonders if this is what would’ve happened if Marianne had married Willoughby after all.
As the characters’ nonsensical decisions are shoehorned into a coma-inducing plot, there’s an abundance of artifice and not an ounce of emotional engagement. While Cooper plays nasty adequately, many of his transgressions are committed off-screen and before rings are exchanged, so Florence comes off as both paranoid and the architect of her own unhappiness.
Despite the copious female nudity that’s unceremoniously shoved into the screenplay to demonstrate that the artists were “progressive”, Menaul’s clichéd casting, tired mechanics and unengaging characters make his film anything but.