Kaveh Daneshmand’s “Limitless Summer season Syndrome” unfolds like a Chekhov drama. Set in an idyllic nation home the place a household of 4 is having fun with the ultimate lazy days of summer time, the French movie is jolted into focus with a whispered allegation that dangers upending a mom’s picture-perfect picture of these she loves. Awash in vivid sunny photographs and careening towards a darkish, knotted ending, Daneshmand’s household drama makes for an more and more disquieting watch, the unseemly secret at its middle as toxic because the pet snail which serves as a ready Chekhov’s gun.
Delphine (Sophie Colon) has what seems like an ideal household. The human rights activist, who finds time throughout her summer time vacation to participate in necessary Zoom city halls on the primacy of household values, has been fortunately married for many years to Antoine (Mathéo Capelli), a profitable novelist. The pair have two adoptive youngsters: Aslan (Gem Deger), who’s about to go overseas to check entomology in just a few days time, and Adia (Frédérika Milano), a teenage lady who’s starting to bloom proper earlier than their eyes. The 4 spend their leisurely days lounging by the pool, consuming cocktails and basking within the solar: a postcard prepared picture of what a multi-ethnic French household can appear to be. That’s how Delphine boasts about it, at the very least — happy with the loving unit she and Antoine have created with their youngsters.
One telephone name is sufficient to throw that loving picture into disarray, when a girl claiming to have been at a celebration with Antoine telephones Delphine. In a drunken stupor he’s prone to have forgotten about, Antoine had allegedly cried about an unspeakable secret he is aware of he can not maintain for for much longer: he’s been having an affair with considered one of his youngsters. After initially dismissing the nameless allegation (by a decidedly well mannered caller who felt it was solely proper to take action), Delphine finds herself reassessing the household dynamics throughout her. Is Antoine’s gaze lingering too lengthy on Adia’s physique? Is he being a lot too handsy whereas serving to his teenage child take care of a burn on her interior thigh?
The paranoia that begins coloring her each waking second is made all of the extra insufferable given how tense everybody appears to be at Aslan’s impending departure. There are anxieties and fears about abandonment that lower by way of his personal expertise as an adoptee which Delphine, strict mom that she is, has maybe unwittingly ignored. And the extra Delphine tries to unravel the key which may be on the coronary heart of a household that now appears alien and alienating to her, the extra “Limitless Summer season Syndrome” thrusts audiences right into a discomfiting type of household drama — one the place characters and actors alike turn out to be endlessly suspect, and the place any sense of intimacy turns into trigger for suspicion. That’s all of the extra pressing on condition that the movie opens with a witness testimony that means one member of the family is not going to survive the weekend, which unfolds as an prolonged flashback.
Shot in tight compositions, “Limitless Summer season Syndrome” nurtures a close-knit intimacy that quickly turns into claustrophobic. Such framing initially encourages viewers to look at the household with as a lot cautious consideration as Delphine. As she strikes by way of the home in hopes of discovering any shred of proof of what she’s been advised, she turns into a keen-eyed observer of Antoine and her teenage youngsters. And as performed by Colon, you possibly can slowly see her paranoia flip into horror as soon as she’s lastly confronted with what’s been saved from her. Delivering a completely restrained efficiency that by no means descends into the melodramatic histrionics the story could in any other case recommend, Colon’s Delphine finally turns into a cipher. In being decreased to an observer, she finally ends up having little to supply by way of her personal company, not to mention her needs and wishes. Which is all the more severe for the reason that closing act of “Limitless Summer season Syndrome” depends upon a fateful resolution she makes to salvage the household that’s been misplaced.
The ending, in reality, which all too neatly ties up free ends, makes Daneshmand’s more and more uncomfortable household drama really feel fairly hole. Enjoying as little greater than an empty provocation that finally ends up trafficking in considerably (although arguably deliberately) tasteless incest and adoptee tropes, “Limitless Summer season Syndrome” eagerly needs to plumb its murky moral quandaries. But all it accomplishes is crafting a portrait of a rotting household that unwittingly performs into arguments about the one sorts of households that need to be so described: particularly, here’s a examine of fathers and moms, of little kids, that, whether or not inadvertently or not, stresses the centrality of blood ties.
But it surely’s all within the service of a lurid story that, due to its insularity (we hardly ever go away the nation home the movie is about at) needs to stay singular however which, given the central character’s ambitions (she’s a human rights advocate, in spite of everything) can not assist however ripple outward in decidedly uncomfortable methods. And so, whereas superbly shot and engagingly structured, “Limitless Summer season Syndrome” leaves audiences with little greater than it provides its characters: a bitter style that’s certain to linger longer than anybody would really like.
