MY SUMMER OF LOVE Dir: Pawel Pawlikowski UK, 2004 87 Minutes Another award-winning film from the BBC, My Summer of Love is typically lush, beautifully crafted and a little quirky. Adapted by director Pawel Pawlikowski from Helen Cross' novel, the film celebrates the English countryside landscape over the school summer holidays, and a friendship between Mona, the poor local girl who lives above the local pub, and Tamsin, a bored rich girl staying at a local estate. The girls develop a typical teenage holiday-friendship, the kind where they make fantastic promises they will never keep and do things they know they will never have to face, once life resumes. Although hailed as a lesbian film, I came away somewhat disappointed. I prefer lesbian films that move me emotionally and challenge me intellectually. The characters in My Summer of Love are sadly underdeveloped and strings of meaning are left hanging loosely in the breeze of the small rural valley setting. The relationship between the girls is awkward in the manner of teenage experimentation, and any sex is only implied if your imagination allows. But the film is charmingly light, with cute characters and a nice gentle lilt. It carries you carefully through a lesbian theme, with hints of debauchery, drug use and religion swept along by a pretty stream through rolling hills. This film is 'lovely'. Not that there's anything wrong with that, if you're that way inclined. Katie Hinsen - 25th July 2005