Detailed movie reviews Days Of The Bagnold Summer

After his summer holiday plans to the US fall through, heavy metal-obsessed teen Daniel (Earl Cave) is stuck in suburbia with his cardie-wearing librarian mum, Sue (Monica Dolan). How will they survive the next six weeks?

You might have an expectation of a teen-flick directorial debut of an Inbetweeners star — bantz, larks, puerility — but Simon Bird’s Days Of The Bagnold Summer does something refreshingly different. More Hal Ashby than Rudge Park Comprehensive, Bird draws a sensitive portrait of a mother-and-son relationship which, if it runs low on dramatic incident, is perfectly played and neatly observed.

At the start of the six-week holidays, Metallica-loving teen Daniel (Cave, son of Nick), is looking forward to an extended stint with his estranged dad in Florida. When the arrangement falls through at the last minute, it sets the scene for Bagnold Summer to deliver a coming-of-age story involving girls, hijinks and finding yourself. But Lisa Owens’ script, adapted from a graphic novel by Joff Winterhart, takes a gentler, more even-handed tack as it focuses on the relationship between Daniel and his 50-something divorcee mum, Sue (Dolan). It’s a clear-cut, not particularly nuanced dynamic — heavy metal-loving sulky son versus dowdy, knitwear-wearing librarian mum — but Bird and Owens show generosity to both sides, DP Simon Tindall’s inventive compositions in tight domestic spaces visually reflecting the distance and barriers between them.

Bagnold Summer is good on the details of the tiny defeats and embarrassments of being an adolescent.
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While Daniel falls out with super-confident best friend Ky (Elliot Speller-Gillott) and becomes the lead singer of an unexpected band, Sue trying to understand her son’s anger and taking tentative steps into a new life is the more successful strand. Dolan is terrific, trying to show patience and compassion for a son she can’t fathom while giving Sue her own inner life too: sequences involving an ill-fated dating life with Daniel’s history teacher (Rob Brydon) are exquisite exercises in timidity and social unease.
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Bagnold Summer is good on the details of the tiny defeats and embarrassments of being an adolescent (it’s a film that understands that one of the most humiliating experiences in a teenage boy’s world is going shoe-shopping with your mum) but, over-reliant on montages scored by Belle & Sebastian to push the story forward, the film feels less compelling as it goes on, gentle to the point of drifting. Still, Cave delivers good inchoate teen angst and the film is a promising calling card for Bird. Just don’t call him Briefcase Auteur.

If the film never completely coheres into a satisfying whole, Days Of The Bagnold Summer has a lot going for it: a nicely judged sense of character, an eye for detail and strong performances, especially from Dolan. It also suggests Simon Bird is a filmmaker worth watching.

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