“What do you do when it’s not summer?” Martino (Claudio Segaluscio) asks Clara (Maria Camilla Brandenburg) in “My Summer with Irene,” a question that she genuinely is unprepared to answer. The two stand outside a party at night that there’s no way Clara would step inside, usually preferring the company of a book, but that’s changed in the weeks she’s spent with Irene (Noée Abita), a fellow 17-year-old with whom she’s run off with, and Clara can’t speak to the future not knowing what tomorrow will bring when even engaging with a boy her age like Martino suggests that any answer she could give him about she spends her life would be false when she knows it’s all about to change.
In Carlo Sironi’s sensitive and lavishly sun-soaked second feature, there is nothing besides the summer for Clara and Irene, who have been put into the care of nurses at a retreat for young cancer patients and those afflicted with other serious illnesses for what should be a few weeks that could take their mind off their maladies, yet only seem to reinforce their dire situation they’re in. Clara can typically be found off on her own, but when neither want to do the activities that the medical staff imposes upon them, Irene inevitably finds her by the pool and the two end up bonding over gelato that Irene insists on enjoying to the very last drop. Clara should know by then what she’s in for with Irene, but still she’s taken aback by the rash decision to skip off to the beach when the two should be getting on a bus to head home and after Irene talks her way into a place to stay at a soon-to-be-renovated house, they are free from supervision of any kind for the first time in their lives, no longer defined by their condition in front of those who know them and free to learn who they are outside of it.
Abita and Brandenberg make for a captivating pair that start to switch places as the drama goes on, with the forthright Irene looking more fragile and timid as the treatments she’s received start to wane and the shy Clara becoming more confident in having Irene as an example. Although the couple giving each other strength in facing the unimaginable may not exactly be breaking any new ground, Sironi admirably resists the shameless tearjerker this could’ve been when their bond is based on the knowledge that they won’t live forever and in one of the boldest strokes, the director largely steers clear of music, except to occasionally underline their adventures with American folk songs that hearken back to the days of jumping trains. (There is also a perfect needle drop of punk music to pierce the silence, able to allow its characters’ spirit emerge in ways they can’t quite bring themselves to properly articulate.) A feeling of serenity comes with considerable weight, at first threatening to crush Clara and Irene when people are being drained of life all around them at the care facility and not a peep is heard but the wind, but it evolves into a sense of peace for the young women who courageously face their fate by making the most of the moment that’s in front of them. In “My Summer with Irene,” the experiences that may seem the most fleeting can also be the longest lasting.
“My Summer with Irene” will screen again at Berlinale on February 22nd at 9:30 am at Zoo Palast 1 and February 25th at 3:45 pm at Cubix 8.