‘The Summer Book’ Review: Glenn Close Takes a Healing, Very Hygge Holiday
variety.comGuy Lodge Film Critic Tove Jansson’s 1972 novel “The Summer Book” wasn’t a memoir, but it was a memory piece of sorts — its slender narrative of largely unspoken grief and healing imbued with, and enriched by, the author’s palpable feeling for its remote Gulf of Finland island setting, where she herself maintained a rustic holiday house.
That it’s taken over half a century for this well-loved book to reach the screen isn’t altogether surprising: That level of subtextual authorial attachment makes it a challenge to film, as does its spare, outwardly low-stakes storytelling.
In his fourth feature, American filmmaker Charlie McDowell makes an equally respectful and respectable stab at the task, capturing some of the wistful, soft-sun warmth of Jansson’s writing — though not quite matching its unassuming poetic depths.
The presence of Glenn Close — radiating creased, quiet benevolence as a weary grandmother anchoring a potentially pained family vacation — will be the chief selling point of “The Summer Book” as it makes its way into the world following its world premiere at the London Film Festival.
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