Minor British slice of life drama, set in a dead-end Yorkshire town, where a romance blossoms between lonely local teenager Mona (Natalie Press) and a posh, flaky girl named Tamsin (Emily Blunt) who is in town for the summer. Add to the mix Mona's ex-con brother Phil (Paddy Considine from In America), who's just found Jesus.
Not much of a story behind that; My Summer of Love is more about the texture of things, about sunlight on meadow grass and breezes blowing through stringy hair and the sound of footsteps on a wooden floor. It's a sensual movie in all senses of the word, and it evokes the hazy summer days of a daydreamy small town girl quite well.
Unfortunately it's all rather inconsequential in the end, not to mention predictable: you know that the smug, born-again Phil will wind up doing something appallingly un-Christian, you know that Tamsin is going to wind up breaking poor Mona's heart, and while explaining the story's actual theme would be tantamount to giving away the ending, it's safe to say that parallels are drawn between Mona's obsession with Tamsin and Phil's obsession with Jesus. But it's all forgotten about rather quickly after the film ends.
Still, Ryszard Lenczewski's cinematography is excellent – you get the feeling that he lit the entire film with only sunshine and candlelight – and the performances are fine. (Emily Blunt seems like a pretentious phony until you realize that she is simply playing one.) Fans of the electronic pop duo Goldfrapp may be interested to know that they provide the film's original score, sparse as it is.