‘The Summer Book’ Review: Glenn Close Stars In Gentle Story Of Bereavement, Parenting & The Healing Power Of Nature – London Film Festival

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At one point in The Summer Book, Charlie McDowell’s infinitely gentle adaptation of Tove Jansson’s novel about a small girl, her father and grandmother spending the short Finnish summer on one of the country’s thousands of islands, nine-year-old Sophia looks at a tapestry on the wall showing a rampant lion. “Is the lion going to eat the man in the tent?,” she asks her redoubtable grandmother, played by a suitably sun-gnarled Glenn Close. “No,” Grandmother says firmly, “He is there to protect him.” The embrace of nature, even when nature presents as a ferocious storm or the cruel predations of old age, is the guiding spirit of both Jansson’s novel, published in 1972 and drawing on her own long summers spent with a niece, and this faithfully rendered adaptation.

Jansson spent much of her life living in a cottage like this one – all wooden planks and questionable plumbing – where, in the film, Sophia, her father (Anders Danielsen Lie, quietly rewarding as ever) and Grandma arrive on a motorboat in the first scene.

It is immediately clear that Sophia’s mother has died since they were last here. Sophia’s father, an illustrator, strains to be the fun dad one senses he used to be, taking refuge from that role in his work.

Sophia, played with precocious subtlety by newcomer Emily Matthews as alert and inquisitive, but struggling with her own complicated grief, demands constant attention from Grandmother.