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Before details of the plot of the film are shared with us, we see Solange start her period. Then, we are fast-forwarded some years into the future where we see the 15-year-old main character starting to have her first crushes. Her parents have also divorced. Her father left to be with another woman and her mother is very low for some reason. Solange has been suffering emotionally and spends most of her days with her neighbor Guillaume who is a metalhead babysitter. At one of the parties, she meets a sophisticated Arnaud and instantly develops a crush on him. Through all these experiences, Solange has to come to terms with the fact that she has a certain power over men. Of course as charming as it sounds, that is not the whole truth to the situation and the consequences are much more troubling.
Reckless Summer is a genuine coming-of-age drama and portrays the parental impact on teenagers quite effectively. One of the most worrying things is witnessing how Solange is completely detached from her mother who suffers from depression and stays in a single room all day. In reality, she spends most of her time at the house of her friend. From the beginning scenes, it is clear that this young girl’s father has been very involved in her life so far and a big departure from that is counselling about her sexual life encounters.
Solange’s mother was consumed by the pain caused by her disintegrating marriage, which left her daughter neglected and uncared for.
From my perspective, the film’s attempts at realism, while commendable, are ultimately futile. There is absolutely no context given as to how Solange’s parent’s divorce affected her and what her internal psychological state is. Rather, all we get to see is her relationships with boys, and her coping mechanisms which, as a teenager, are broken at best. Instead of emotionally charged reactions, dramatic outbursts, or even mental breakdowns, she is stoic, which psychologically feels entirely implausible. All this culminates into a plot, which is both flat and unfathomably unrealistic.
- Solange, a girl aged fifteen, is trying to fit in with her peers by experimenting with boys. She did have a stable family but her father left which caused the family business to become turbulent. She was ultimately left to try and understand her femininity on her own without any assistance.
- Solange’s mother, whose name is never mentioned, is too immersed in her marital problems to give Solange the affection and care that a young woman needs. After her husband abandons them, she becomes remorseful towards her years of yielded love choices. Therefore, she does not seem to be there for her daughter, not only for supervising, but to support her as well.
- Solange’s father, whose name is also not mentioned, does not appear to spend much time at home as he works as a steward. And this is where Solange’s mother’s feelings come from. After these two get a divorce we never see him again. His absence is just as clear but for different reasons. This helps to explain Solange’s actions during the movie. From this exposition, it seems clear that Solange misses her father greatly.
- Guillaume is their neighbour who is a metalhead and used to be Solange’s babysitter. The funny part of the story is that he is her babysitter to this day, as, after the divorce, the teenage girl spends most of her time at his place. He seems rather aimless, depressed, and as if he’s simply existing without any direction. In the second half of the film, he does something that is quite unexpected of him.
- Arnaud is Solange’s first “boyfriend”. He is wealthy and has interesting perspectives on political and other social issues. Solange admires him for his superiority and how he “made it out of there” in the summer. Unfortunately, he is a very egocentric individual and does not regard her as a real person at all. He is only using her for his self-serving purposes.
Because of the divorce of her parents, Solange’s sexual awakening begins. Louisiane Gouverneur was impressive in portraying Solange. She meshed well with the demands of the controversial sexual elements of the character with the poorly written elements of the script. For his part, Vincent Deniard as Guillaume, Solange’s complicated love interest gave a more than decent performance and Aymeric Fougeron was very good too.
Rodolphe Tissot, the director and co-writer, definitely meant well, but it appears to me that the pacing ruined half of the atmosphere. It is as though the first half is too slow, while so much is occurring in the second half. Everything that is meant to take place in the last twenty-five-minute mark happens so quickly that it becomes a blur, and to top it off the audience is left with an open-ended question. Even if the film is well-placed, the ending was poorly thought out. The roman-portrait is Schuld uns das Schicksal, the quote is Penelope Pourriat’s work.
The side characters and the main character are left without any closure, which feels like an unsatisfactory ending to me. I didn’t get enough details from the conversation that Solange and her mother had, and the discussion after felt much more unsatisfactory. And once more like the ending of the entire film, it feels unfinished.
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