Ten placid summer movies that hide emotional storms to watch at home

Summer is a time of calm, even boredom. Long, hot summers with little or nothing to do, until a storm in the form of an emotional volcano awakens us from the pleasant mental retreat. A gale that shakes us and returns us to the ardor of life, to the difficulty of existing. In this article we select ten films that are based on these plot and background essences, all of them available on platforms, in order to enjoy them during a pleasant August retreat or, failing that, to rest after an exhausting day of work in the heat .

‘Violent Summer’ (1959), by Valerio Zurlini

Set in the summer of 1943, during World War II and in the midst of bombing Italy (Mussolini was about to be overthrown, and Italy was about to sign the armistice on September 3 of that year), but centered on such an unusual element as interesting: a group of young people on summer vacation in Riccione, in Rimini, a coastal town initially far from danger, where a group of rich children of fascists, who do not fight in the war because their parents have freed them with extensions and plugs, live away from barbarism and desolation. In this privileged microcosm, Zurlini, great of italian cinema unknown to too many, it unfolds a beautiful love story between disparate ages. Available in Flixole.

‘A summer with Monica’ (1953), by Ingmar Bergman

Two young warehouse workers begin a sentimental relationship and decide to flee from the spirit of the city, family repression and workplace and sexual harassment. In a small boat they find freedom, love and the flower of life, like a kind of hippies before hippieism. However, the naivety in the face of an idyllic adult life, in which solutions to hunger and other serious problems must be provided, ends up leading them to a miserable existence and adultery. In a mythical moment, Harriet Anderson breaks the fourth wall, looks at the camera and asks us, defiantly and without voice: “And you, spectator of all this, what do you think of what I’m doing?”. History of cinema. Available in Filmin.

‘Do What You Must’ (1989), by Spike Lee

Sounds Fight the Power, from Public Enemy, and Rosie Perez dances in the middle of the street. Glorious title credits. “What we need is awareness.” Spike Lee, activist, artist, did not create a comedy; neither a thriller not a social drama; he did it all at once, under a wave of suffocating heat. A revolutionary film to make the revolution, which is seen with a smile until the digestion is cut off. Raheem Radio emulates Robert Mitchum of the night of the hunter and his tattooed knuckles —in his case, golden fists—, ready for the fight: “Love versus hate”. The world is Yours. “I’m just a black man who wants to go through life with his dick held high,” said one character before a white man in a Celtics jersey stomped his Nike Air Jordans. Available on Amazon and Filmin.

‘Belle Epoque’ (1992), by Fernando Trueba

The team spent a whole summer living together in Ponte de Lima, a small town in Portugal, and the placidity was transferred to the shooting. Nice atmosphere, happy movie. II Republic, the loves and ardors of adolescence, youth, maturity, old age. The most beautiful time of our lives. Everyone loves each other while the final horror is being prepared. What came after. The sour ending of a luminous film, with an extraordinary cast of performers, and Trueba as master of ceremonies, with his sights set on the brushstroke of Pierre-Auguste Renoir and in the image and tone of his son Jean. The celebration of existence. And as icing on the cake, the Oscar for the best foreign language film. Available at rtve.es/play.

Clara’s Knee (1970), by Éric Rohmer

Almost like the lewd schemers of dangerous friendships, de Laclos, a fabulous novelist and a womanizing writer, both middle-aged, reflect on their emotional and sexual interest in younger boys and girls, and the latter becomes the former’s guinea pig in a metalinguistic operation of seduction. fifth of the Rohmer’s six moral tales, the film is a quiet summer break, a hymn to infidelity, and a clash against self-esteem, which is immediately satisfied. The goal is the purest desire, the desire for nothing: to caress the bare knee of a 17-year-old teenager, her vulnerable point, the magnetic pole of passion. And nothing more. Accidental rubbing is invalid; the culmination will be the accepted caress. Available in Filmin.

‘The Florida Project’ (2017), directed by Sean Baker

The Baker’s American social cinema. Children who take care of themselves, without their parents being able to offer them hardly any attention, for two fundamental reasons: because they are victims of the system, human beings working hours and hours to get a few turkeys; or because they are directly a disaster. They live in Florida, one step away from Disneyland, but they can never be part of their childhood dream, of their magic. They are that impoverished corner in the shadow of the kingdom. The 400 blows to a childhood forged on the basis of crises and pranks, which Baker films with the resounding colors of the stories: mauve, pink, light blue. “Do you know why this is my favorite tree?” Asks the protagonist girl to her friend. “Because despite having fallen, it is still growing.” Available in TCM.

‘The Summer Hours’ (2008), by Olivier Assayas

At the time of death also comes the moment of the transmission of the legacy. What has remained of that family summer home after the death of a mother? The children and grandchildren, then, are torn between the memory of what they lived in each of its corners, to be felt or experienced again, or the easy possibility of a sale, to leave that memory behind in benefit of the cold economic consideration . Assayas reflects on the family inheritance —the physical, the economic, the moral, the artistic, the emotional— with the calm of the breeze and the light of summer. a luck of French Chekhov in which the subterranean currents end up discovering both the lost time and what remains to be lived. Available on Amazon and Filmin.

‘The swamp’ (2001), by Lucrecia Martel

The eternal mystery of swimming pools in the cinema. Here, in Argentine, the pool. The decline of a social class, of a place, of a generation. martel shows a classist and racist provincial bourgeoisie on the verge of fainting, which refuses to accept its new reality. The swamp of the title is a physical place, but also a swampy mental terrain, the tedium of despair, the twilight of a society. Very fine and calm, sordid and elegant, the film, without music, is a display of subversion and rarefaction of the environment from the apparent irrelevance. Until managing to define a world that falls, dilapidated and smelly, among the chatter of its creatures. Available in Filmin.

‘The Law of Desire’ (1987), by Pedro Almodóvar

The most transgressive Almodóvar it is difficult to conceptualize it as placid, but The law of Desire It is still one of the best films about the quiet summer in Madrid, about the nightly August heat of the big city and some of its tributaries: listless work, drinks, drugs, furtive sex, the jet of a hose as a restorative of a life. Its protagonist, a film and theater director who has plenty of bed opportunities in exchange for a role, is passionately in love with a younger boy who leaves for the tranquility of Conil. The letter smells of everyday life, but the spirit is pure daring. That of a romantic artist who wraps thriller the unbridled passion of loving without being loved. Available on Netflix.

‘Summer Night’ (1962), by Jordi Grau

Grau’s debut work, a director who in later years would show great versatility: avant-garde and genre cinema; social drama and cult horror. Very influenced by Italian cinema (the director ended up training in Rome thanks to a scholarship and became a friend by Federico Fellini), the film is set on two consecutive nights of San Juan, with three couples as protagonists: empty bourgeois lives and a palpably bitter vision of marriage. Financed by Procusa, an Opus Dei company, it was censored by the very production company that had paid for it, after making a private showing to Escrivá de Balaguer himself, who did not like it. They cut 15 minutes, but the Spanish Film Library recovered the original montage years later. Available in Flixole.