One marriage, two movie reviews: Days of the Bagnold Summer

Days of the Bagnold Summer. Photo / Supplied

Greg Bruce and Zanna Gillespie review new British film Days of the Bagnold Summer.

SCORES
Level of emotional repression: 5
Quality of national self-mockery: 5
Quantity of greasy hair: 5

HE SAW

Few combinations of words sound less exciting than "British Film Festival". Britain has never been recognised for creativity of filmic expression in the same way as have been France, Italy, Germany, the rest of Western Europe, Eastern Europe, the Pacific, the majority of Asia, Africa and South America. Having said that, the British are - and always have been - world leaders at two things: laughing at themselves and emotional repression, and Days of the Bagnold Summer is a paradigm example of both.

I was surprised how much I was moved by the film's story of a 50-ish woman and her 15-year-old son stuck at home together during the summer hols, in generic British suburbia. I knew the director was one of the former stars of British sitcom The Inbetweeners, so I had expected stereotypes and juvenilia, but the dominant experience turned out to be the sweetness of the emotional connection and the evocation of the power of the mother/son bond in the face of teenage s***tiness.

The movie gives roughly equal weight to the twin agonies of being a 15-year-old and being the parent of a 15-year-old. Both are beset by the apparently minor travails of middle-class life and the temptation is to say these travails are "nothing serious", but the movie makes clear they are really quite serious. There is deep emotional pain in the mundane but, because this is a British film, that pain is quiet, sublimated, heard - if at all - through closed doors and generally seen only in passing.

It's easy to think of pain as a continuum but it's far more complex. The suffering of the 15-year-old in the film is somewhat to do with his relationships with the people in his life - particularly his parents - but mostly it's to do with the pain of existence.

He is played by Nick Cave's son, Earl, whose real-life twin brother died four years ago, aged 15, after falling off a cliff. A teenager telling the story of trying to deal with the pain of his brother's death through art would be perfect fodder for Hollywood. But that same teenager sublimating his pain to tell the story of the pain of another teenager - what could be more British?

SHE SAW

We had watched the film not 12 hours prior, but I had to text Greg to ask its name. It's not a memorable title - Days of the Bagnold Summer - but it's fitting for this understated film. It's a story of a sullen, long-haired, Metallica-loving teen, Daniel, whose plans to spend the summer in Florida with his father and his new wife are cancelled unexpectedly, leaving him stuck at home in dreary British suburbia with his mum for six weeks.

Though this surely wasn't the intention of the film, as a parent of young children, I found it a somewhat terrifying glimpse into the future of raising teens. Our 7-year-old has yelled the occasional "I hate you!" Which is routinely followed up (about 10-15 minutes after the rage subsides) with "I didn't mean it. I love you. You're the best mummy in the whole world!", accompanied by a barrage of hugs and kisses and often a sweet, misspelled love note. I have gleaned from this film that we can expect love declarations, physical affection and expletive-free note writing to dry up completely before too long.

Daniel finds his mother Sue's every utterance irritating. She's played brilliantly by Monica Dolan, and is very restrained in her interactions with her son. She's an unassuming librarian raising him alone and without complaint. Their relationship is the primary bond in both of their lives but teenage boys and women in their early 50s have almost nothing in common and the film wonderfully explores the juxtaposition of their inevitable friction and mutual affection. The cinematography is brilliant. Film-maker Simon Bird does an excellent job of illustrating the emotional distance between Daniel and Sue by how they're positioned within the frame.

Greg commented that the British seaside looked bleak and I countered that I thought it was charming. That kind of opposing worldview is something we should probably discuss with a marriage counsellor at some point.

Like Sue, Days of the Bagnold Summer is very British in its restraint. It's a quiet exploration of what happens when two people so close to one another become so far apart. I found it a very endearing watch.

In bed that night, I said that I could see why a somewhat depressed teen like Daniel would find his mother's presence annoying. Greg couldn't. He thought Daniel was completely unreasonable and I'm afraid that doesn't bode well for our children when they, like Daniel, eventually start to loathe the very sight of us.

Days of the Bagnold Summer is screening at the British Film Festival from tomorrow.