A Summer Story Movie Review

When young men play fast and loose with young women, they're only being human, according to the movies. This is the theme of A Summer Story. (When young women play fast and loose with young men, they're invariably monsters, but that's another story.) Upper-class English twit James Wilby shows his bad manners: (1) by falling in love with fetching country lass Imogen Stubbs, (2) by ditching her for aristocratic Sophie Ward, and (3) by later returning to the country with his childless wife to learn whatever became of his first love. His worst offense, according to another upper-class twit, was in promising to marry the poor girl at all. This Piers Haggard film has nothing new to say about class differences, but the Somerset and Devon locations are pretty, and Imogen Stubbs makes a strong impression as the jilted farm girl. Susannah York, who specialized in playing bewitching heroines circa 1963, has a few brief scenes as a protective relation of Miss Stubbs. During the final credits, the period film breaks into a Moody Blues song for no apparent reason. It's the only unpredictable element in this dusty romance based on John Galsworthy's The Apple Tree. A Summer Story focuses on a spineless and irritating character who doesn't deserve sympathy and who certainly doesn't rate an entire movie.

1988 (PG-13) 97m/C GB James Wilby, Imogen Stubbs, Susannah York, Sophie Ward, Kenneth Colley, Jerome Flynn; D: Piers Haggard; W: Penelope Mortimer; M: Georges Delerue. VHS, Closed Caption