In The Summers review: Passage of time shapes this superb father-daughter drama
HT at Sundance | Alessandra Lacorazza confidently charts the decades-spanning relationship of two daughters with their emotionally distant father.
If you soaked up to the world of Charlotte Wells’ Aftersun which released in 2022, about a young father and his teenage daughter’s Turkish summer holiday, there are high chances that you would want to sit with a film like In The Summers. This is a tender and original film on its own accord, mounted like a confident haiku. At Sundance, the film was awarded the Grand Jury Prize as well as the directing award for Colombian American writer-director Alessandra Lacorazza.
Like the best of films that add new space into the coming-of-age genre, In The Summers has that rooted cultural specificity that ultimately makes its thematic concerns universal. It is about growing up with a parent and then, growing apart. To try to know who was this person before he was my dad. Divided into four chapters, In The Summers revolves around two sisters Violeta and Eva, and their complicated relationship with Vincente which will take shape over the course of two decades, when both of them come down to spend the summer at Las Cruces, New Mexico with their dad. Over these four chapters, his daughters will find their own voice and reasons to survive the relationship with Vincente.
