‘The Summer Book’: London Review

Dir: Charlie McDowell. Finland/UK 2024. 90mins

The adaptation of classic literature centred around children can be a fraught affair. There’s a magic to being young that words convey best, and sometimes it’s best to leave it that way. The Summer Book is an ambitious translation of a highly-regarded, slim memoir/novel by Finnish author and Moomins creator Tove Jansson that impressionistically and naturalistically talks about a young girl and her grandmother over the course of a summer on an island in the Finnish archipelago (or perhaps several summers; it’s told in 22 small incidents). Although there’s nothing about Charlie McDowell’s interpretation that doesn’t aim for similar excellence, the very act of embodying the book lessens its magic.

The film’s restfulness eventually turns into something more soporific

Glenn Close, as Grandmother, banishes the memories of her last matriarch in Hillbilly Elegy, although it is another role for the 77 year-old actor which leans heavily on hair and make-up and an accent, this time Finnish, as well as a walking stick. Emily Matthews, as nine year-old Sophia, acquits herself well, and Norwegian actor Anders Danielson Lie is more present than his character was in the book, playing the illustrator Father whose drawings help flesh out the visuals. The location work is more authentic than the casting, painstakingly recreating Jansson’s own cottage and the beauty that surrounds it. This restful meditation on the natural world can reply far too heavily though on Hania Rori’s piano-based score for momentum.

Capturing the subtext of children’s literature for film is even harder when the works are nostalgic and small in scope, like recent adaptations of The Secret Garden or Swallows And Amazons. Even less happens in The Summer Book. Sophia, her Father and Grandmother arrive on the island shortly after the death of her mother. It’s not clear in which timeframe that The Summer Book is set, because the area is so remote, but clothing and hair and the gramophone would suggest it’s contemporaneous to Janssen’s own time there as a child in the 1920s (and for the rest of her life). 

Grandmother has been coming here for 47 years and it’s clear her time is limited; Sophia is at the start of her life. Together, they forge an existence on the island, learning about each other’s needs – Grandmother often tries to escape Sophie’s constant babble by smoking a solitary cigarette – jostling with boredom and discovering nature. They make a day trip to a neighbouring island; they adopt a cat. Sophie and her father plant a Poplar tree and a small flower garden to remember her mother. Eventually there’s a storm, which provokes some sort of climax. Writer Robert Jones has stripped the slim novel even further by dispensing with one visiting character and lessening the presence of another. Thus the film relies utterly on the beauty of nature, and Close’s stout performance. Eventually, though, the film’s restfulness turns into something more soporific.

It’s hard to tell whether The Summer Book tacks so strongly towards Close’s character because of the strength of such a respected actress, or if the film would naturally have bent that way when the characters came to life. Certainly, in the book it’s more of a relationship, but the film becomes focused on Grandmother’s mortality in a way that does threaten to overwhelm the funny character of the child and the closely-observed beauty of this family’s circumstances. It will be interesting to see how it is received in its co-production home of Finland, where the author and illustrator Jansson is revered (and was the subject of a 2020 biopic Tove).

To read about the Eastern Gulf of Finland is one thing, but to see it depicted here is always wonderful. McDowell, who previously directed The Discovery, works with DoP Sturla Brandth Grøvlen again to present a film in which nature is emphasised, but cinematography does its own quiet work. The place is beautiful because it simply is, not just because it’s lit to look that way.  That’s the chief takeaway from The Summer Book: a real place in time, and an interaction and respect between it and its inhabitants. That alone will draw older-skewing audiences long after the film has settled into its own life.