It’s a bit of a shame that Kaveh Daneshmand’s new film Endless Summer Syndrome comes to us in the wake of Catharine Breillat’s Last Summer. It’s not enough that they share similarly evocative titles; both also immerse themselves in the psyches of their female protagonists, their bourgeois milieu, and the moral complexities of, if not quasi-incestuous, then certainly taboo relationships.
Delphine (Sophie Colon, in her first film role), a high-powered lawyer who advocates for children (like Lea Drucker’s character in Last Summer), spends the summer relaxing and working sporadically from the countryside home she shares with her husband, Antoine (Matteo Capelli), and two adopted children (the similarities keep coming), Aslan and Adia (Cem Deger and Frédérika Milano, respectively). One day, Delphine receives an anonymous phone call from one of her husband’s co-workers, who suggests he is having inappropriate relations with one of their children, and this sets Delphine down a paranoid spiral as she tries to decipher her husband’s behavior within this frightening new context.
Endless Summer Syndrome makes no qualms about emphasizing Delphine’s sense of precarity within the nuclear family; it sees this domestic unit as a web of interconnected, fluid, and vulnerable alliances. As such, it frames the sexual relationship between Sophie’s husband and one of her adopted children as a threat to her own. Aslan and Adia have a close relationship borne out of their similarities: both are adopted, in their late teens, and on the cusp of adulthood. Aslan is also gearing up for a move to New York City to begin university, about which he seems cautiously optimistic. Aslan makes a childlike impression, not only because of his appearance (his innocent, youthful face and deep, pleading eyes remind of Xavier Dolan), but also his obsession with exotic insects (a giant, poisonous snail is his prize possession). His and Adia’s relationship verges on codependency, and, like the multi-colored lamps in Aslan’s bedroom/insect sanctuary, casts this already morally grey drama about illicit relationships with its own sickly sweet hue.
The film’s central premise is framed by brief scenes in a small office at a police station, during which a detective interviews each family member. The faint revelations earned with each testimony ratchet up the tension each time we revisit the summer interlude with the family. After the anonymous call, Delphine looks for any clue in behavior that might confirm a relationship between Matteo and Adia, who is, of course, her first suspect. Delphine walks in on them as Matteo suggestively (at least to her) applies ointment to a bug bit on Adia’s inner thigh, and she reacts in anger. Delphine course-corrects later on when the family is out to dinner; the requisite montage of merriment temporarily rights the wrongs we can already tell threaten to emerge.
Unlike Breillat’s film, which foregrounds the sexual relationship between a woman and her step-son without shame, Daneshmand’s relegates the taboo relationship underwriting the drama to the margins. The result is a film less concerned with the emotions of taboo sex and the psychology of those taking part than with the mental gymnastics required by those outside of it to sniff it out; and with the measures one takes to maintain a semblance of domestic order.
The film’s dialogue tends toward the expository, and the structure is prescriptive to a point. While we know the taboo relationship is not going to be what Delphine ever imagined it would be, there is a sick sense of anticipation throughout over whether we will get to see the relationship in action. The film offers that relief, though to what end is not clear; at the important climax, Danechmand’s visual strategy allows us to experience the relationship as close as possible, even though until this point the film has paid only the most perfunctory attention to building it. Like Delphine’s obsession with sunscreen, the film covers everything with a thick veneer, a pretense for protection from the forbidden, dangerous, alluring rays of the sun. During the last interview in the present day, Delphine’s choice about how to save her family is finally made clear. Until then, the film takes sick pleasure in luxuriating in this tension.
DIRECTOR: Kaveh Daneshmand; CAST: ddd; DISTRIBUTOR: Altered Innocence IN THEATERS/STREAMING: December 13; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 38 min.
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