A teenager spends his summer listening to heavy metal music and trying to get along with his librarian mom.
“When someone looks back and writes a history of this summer, two people they will most definitely leave out are Sue and Daniel Bagnold.” – Joff Winterhart – author of ‘Days of the Bagnold Summer.’
So begins the graphic novel which forms the basis for Simon Bird’s directorial debut film, “Days of the Bagnold Summer.” Sue Bagnold (Monica Dolan) and her 15-year-old son, Daniel (Earl Cave), might be left out of the summer’s history, but their summer of seemingly endless ennui clashing with the tension between mother and son is the essential construct of this little gem of a movie. Daniel is both his mother’s nightmare and her one delight and she his, though he would never acknowledge that.
The summer wasn’t supposed to be boring. Daniel was scheduled to travel from his home in Britain to his father’s home in Florida, where he now resides along with his pregnant “trophy wife.” But when a last-minute call from dear old Dad cancels the plans, Daniel is faced with an entire six weeks with his mother Sue, a drab, fifty-two-year-old lackluster, colorless librarian. Sue is sweet, retiring, non-confronting, and drab. She dearly loves her son, though her best memories of him are as a youngster when they would engage in fun activities together. He was her entertainment after Daniel’s father flew the coop. Flash forward just a few years and now Daniel is fifteen and a “metalhead,” obsessed with Metallica, one of the “big four” bands of thrash metal along with Megadeth, Anthrax, and Slayer. Like his musical heroes, Daniel dresses in the customary grungy black clothes and long, lank, greasy hair, parted in the middle to successfully cover his face when he wishes to hide from the word, which is often.
His mother, Sue, could she possibly have begotten this child? I’m sure she is wondering that as she hangs their wash on the outside clothesline: her line of clothing is all pink, while Daniel’s side is all-black; a thousand-word picture. Sue is, what else, but a librarian! She daily engages in rote, routine work, checking in books, and shelving books, and checking out books. Her occasional interactions with real people are few but when they occur she is amiable, accessible, and serviceable. She is also extremely naive and unsophisticated as when we see her caught off her guard and invited on a date with a local teacher of Daniel’s. Daniel is taken aback that his mother has garnered a date with the obsequious teacher, Douglas (Rob Brydon), and he is furious also. Sue, on the other hand, is quite flustered and anxious but thrilled by the attention from a nice looking middle-aged man with solid, acceptable community standing. Alas, all attempts to make her a bit classier in her appearance are barely noticeable. The date, unfortunately, confirms Sue’s opinion of men and their intentions when she rejects his clumsy attempts at lovemaking and later sees him on a date with another woman.
Daniel is a depressed teen, not knowing how to fill his empty hours with only a friend or two to help entertain him. A joke played on him by his best friend, Ky (Elliot Speller-Gillott), pushes him deeper into his personal black hole and his responses to Sue’s attempts to re-create some of the fun of his childhood, only backfire and create aggressively angry responses to her attempts at interaction. His words to her are, at times, almost unbelievably condescending and hurtful. In one scene, they are seated opposite one another in a booth at a coffee shop. When he becomes angry with her, he jumps up and sits down beside her. She is surprised and asks why the change of seats to which he replies, “So I won’t have to look at you.” Daniel is free with his put-downs of her, her looks, her lack of style, her boring job, etc., however, a closer look would perhaps suggest those put-downs are misplaced. They would be more deserved by his absent, neglectful, irresponsible father.
Monica Dolan is Sue Bagnold come to life. Slump-shouldered without any penchant for style in either clothing, make-up, or hairstyle, she is a far cry from her real appearance or personality. Earl Cave as Daniel is the fifteen-year-old you just want to slap. Though twenty in real life, Cave is tall, a lanky picture of a boy in harm’s way, possibly unless something intrudes to turn things around for him. The inhibited relationship between mother and son will elicit different responses from parents watching the film. Sue’s love for her son is so real and sometimes raw, while his responses to her tentative attempts to connect once again as they had when he was young are periodically demeaning and devoid of feeling. Their attempts to make a mother/son meaningful connection in an otherwise colorless, drab summer is the gem in this film.
Director Simon Bird’s got this one in his pocket. I loved his use of wordless pictures, much like the graphic novel at its base, when, for example, the disconnect between mother and son is evident as they walk out to an ice cream truck. Mother trudges out first and is already ordering by the time son appears. They don’t manage to walk together and this is a visual disconnect as we see this scene played out almost as if on a stage. Everyone is in a flat profile, like their life. Many have found this film terribly depressing. Those were the younger viewers, I would expect. To them the premise IS depressing. I, however, have found “it’s not over, till it’s over” and that applies to this not-to-be-missed gem.
In Virtual Cinemas and on Digital Friday, February 19th
