My Summer of Love<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I gather My Summer of Love has been out in Britain for a while, and might even be on video there now, but it just opened this past weekend in Canada. I\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2005\/07\/my-summer-of-love.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"My Summer of Love\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I gather My Summer of Love has been out in Britain for a while, and might even be on video there now, but it just opened this past weekend in Canada. 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{"id":2731,"date":"2005-07-03T08:03:00","date_gmt":"2005-07-03T08:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2005\/07\/my-summer-of-love\/"},"modified":"2005-07-03T08:03:00","modified_gmt":"2005-07-03T08:03:00","slug":"my-summer-of-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2005\/07\/my-summer-of-love.html","title":{"rendered":"My Summer of Love"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I gather My Summer of Love<\/a><\/i> has been out in Britain for a while, and might even be on video there now, but it just opened this past weekend in Canada. I caught it at a press screening a week and a half ago \u2014 and since I didn\u2019t jot my thoughts down at the time, my memories of it have already faded somewhat since then \u2014 but I do remember thinking it was an interesting little flick, at least where the relationship between the two women is concerned.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, I can\u2019t say I cared for the film\u2019s treatment of religion or Christianity. Apparenty the main character\u2019s born-again brother Phil, played by In America<\/i>\u2018s Paddy Considine, is not in the original novel and was added to the story<\/a> by director Pawel Pawlikowski \u2014 and since this character is a big, big part of the film, I can only wonder what the original story did without him. But the thing that gets at me is not the depiction of this particular character, per se<\/i>, but the depiction of the other Christians around him.<\/p>\n

We are supposed to believe that Phil just got out of prison, and that he found God in there. But how did he find him? Is there a discipler, or spiritual director, in Phil\u2019s life \u2014 someone he might be accountable to? As far as the film is concerned, there sure doesn\u2019t seem to be; instead, once he\u2019s out of prison, Phil begins hosting meetings and leading various initiatives, and the other Christians just follow him around, like a mass of anonymous faces.<\/p>\n

Did they all convert because of Phil, and does this explain why they let him do whatever he does, even when it is highly questionable and the sort of thing that might ordinarily provoke some debate (such as shutting his grown-up sister inside her room)? Doubtful, as there probably hasn\u2019t been enough time for Considine to create so many of his own followers from scratch. Were they all Christians before him, then? Doubtful, since they seem, if anything, even less mature in the faith \u2014 though that may be because they are less developed as characters in general.<\/p>\n

Considine has said that he researched the role by attending an Alpha course<\/a>, and I think his performance is as authentic as it can be, given the demands of the script. But there is a scene near the end of the film where a woman almost seduces Phil, and then she laughs and says, \u201cYou\u2019re too easy!\u201d And that is how I feel about the film\u2019s portrayal of faith in general \u2014 the director has made it \u201ctoo easy\u201d to expose these characters as frauds and dupes, etc.<\/p>\n

But I gather some people disagree and think this film rings true anyway. Feel free to try to persuade me I\u2019m wrong.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"