Summertime

1971. Delphine works on her father's farm, drives the tractor and lives a life she can tell no one about. She goes to Paris and meets Carole, who is active in the women's movement. The affair begins, then Delphine's father has a stroke and she has to return to the farm. Carole follows her there. The subject is not love but how the same relationship becomes a different thing in a different place. In Paris being together is possible; in the village every glance is a calculation. Delphine's retreat is presented not as cowardice but as the fear of losing the only life she has. The form is warm and tangible: field work, harvest, animals, sweating bodies. The camera does not romanticise the countryside, it shows what working there is. Catherine Corsini directs, from a script written with Laurette Polmanss. The French title, La belle saison, means the fine season, and by the end you understand that a season is exactly what this was. Izïa Higelin plays Delphine, Cécile de France plays Carole and Noémie Lvovsky plays Delphine's mother, whose short speech in the final scene is the best passage in the film. Who it is for: viewers who like films about the women's movement of the seventies and the tension between country and city. Who it is not for: anyone wanting a happy ending; the film refuses that from the start.