I was only 4 years old in the summer of 1993, so I don’t really remember it. I have ideas what I might have been doing — summer camp, watching TV at my grandparent’s house, waiting for the next episode of Batman to come on — but I can’t know for sure. Perhaps it’s inevitable that we only have vague memories of our earliest years—it’s not until adulthood that we have the tools to contextualize them. The new Catalonian film, Summer 1993, attempts to do that.
Directed by Carla Simón and co-written by Simón and Valentina Viso, the film follows Frida (Laia Artigas), a six-year-old girl who is forced to leave Barcelona after her mother’s death to live with her relatives in the Catalonian countryside. The story is told from Frida’s perspective and because she doesn’t understand the context of the drama surrounding her, the film is more understated than its premise might suggest. Rather, Summer 1993 is less family melodrama and more a love letter to childhood and to the parents who shape it.
Because the film is so removed from city life, it’s easy to forget that it takes place in 1993. The clothes fit the period, but a lot of those styles are coming back into fashion. So, it’s not until you see an outdated piece of technology that you’re reminded. I stead, the starkest indicator of the time period is the way everyone reacts to the possibility that Frida contracted AIDS from her mother. People barely understood how it was transmitted then and the distance that places between Frida and everyone else only heightens her sense of isolation in her new environment. It’s hard to imagine a moment more traumatic or scarring for a child who is already adrift than the scene where another child’s mother goes into hysterics after Frida cuts her knee during a game of tag.
It’s moments like that that remind the audience that as bad as Frida’s behavior often is, it’s also a product both of her difficulty adjusting to her new way of life and totally in keeping with the indulgent, unstructured parenting she’s received before. If anything, Frida’s behavior reflects more poorly on her mother and her extended family than on her.
Perhaps the best example comes early, as we watch Frida play-act her own mother‘s parenting style through a game with Anna. With heavy make-up covering her face and a feather boa as a shirt, she repeatedly tells Anna mommy is too tired to play—all while a twig cigarette dangles from her fingers. It’s an elegant bit of storytelling not just because it allows the audience to understand how Frida was raised without requiring exposition, but because it’s the first hint we get that her mother may have been a sex worker. Granted, Simón never clarifies that point, leaving the audience to draw its own conclusions.
Much like Sean Baker’s approach in last year’s The Florida Project, Simón doesn’t lead the audience through a narrative so much as obliquely refer to it. Rather, the plot takes place around Frida and while she doesn’t have the context to understand what’s happening fully, the audience does. The camera also emphasizes Frida’s perspective. Cinematographer Santiago Racaj keeps the camera almost exclusively at Frida’s eye level and we often look at her face while adults talk in the background.
Though Frida clearly doesn’t understand everything that’s being said–or at least its meaning–there’s always a level of attentiveness and cleverness in Artigas’s gaze. Though Frida may not understand the exact context, she can read the emotions behind everything that’s being said and she acts accordingly. In fact, it’s that same cleverness that makes the moments when she acts out seem almost sinister.
Simón’s goal is realism, but if this movie had darker lighting, Frida could easily be the demon child in a horror movie. Still, while some of what Frida does is pretty evil (see both times she tricks Anna into life-threatening situations), Simón also never lets the audience forget that Frida is acting out in the only ways she knows how. Every time her grandparents and extended family come to visit, they enable her misbehavior and Frida is smart enough to exploit them to get what she wants. By contrast, her acting out with Marga is about testing boundaries. She’s trying to see how much she can get away with, but she’s also desperate for attention. Frida is used to aimlessness in her normal life, but what Simón/Viso understand is that she’s just as desperate for structure and approval. That’s where Marga comes in.
As played by Bruna Cusí, Marga is at once the perfect archetype of motherhood and a flawed human being. Though Frida is the film’s protagonist, Marga provides its emotional center. At the beginning, she’s perhaps a bit too permissive. When a sullen Frida throws a comb out the car window, Marga patiently gets out and picks it up. When Frida takes credit for something Anna did, she let’s it happen. Though her desire to appease Frida makes sense, it’s also what allows Frida to think she can act out. Worse, it shows Anna that bad behavior is rewarded and she quickly starts to act out as well, refusing to tie her own shoes the same way Frida does.
Marga catches on to Frida’s manipulation just as quickly as Frida catches on to her new parents’ soft spots and Cusí effortlessly transforms endless patience into the overwhelmed frustration that any parent can recognize. What she realizes more than any other character perhaps besides Frida herself is that while Frida has been lavished with love her whole life, what she needs is discipline. She understands when to be firm and when to be soft and that particular picture of motherhood is ultimately what makes Summer 1993 so rewarding.
Though the film is ostensibly Frida’s story, it’s really a love letter to mothers. Frida is a product of her influences and without Marga, it’s easy to imagine that she wouldn’t have become so well-adjusted. Rather than focus on that trauma and struggle, though, Simón focuses on the subtle nurturing that Frida doesn’t even realize help her get through it. At the end of the day, parenting is the gradual accumulation of love and attention that a person doesn’t really understand until adulthood. This is Simón and Viso’s moment.
Rating: 7.5/10
