Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

hyped garbage

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Sangaile is a 17 year old girl in love with acrobatic planes but is afraid of heights. She is lonely and cuts herself. She befriends Auste who lives nearby. Auste photographs Sangaile in her fashion designs and the two begin a summer romance. Auste helps Sangaile gain confidence to take flight.The photography is dreamy. The girls are waif-like. The plot is thin. The drama is limited. The intensity is low. This Lithuanian indie provides another entry into the lesbian teen genre. The plane flying and vertigo could have been interesting but the movie fails to give it the visual effect. The teen girl angst is done as expected but nothing more. This is barely a pass.

Even if she is from Lithuania, the director Alanté Kavaïte lives and works mainly in France so "Summer of Sangaïle" is the first film she shoots in her native country. Through the bright photography and the poetical shots, the film cleverly combines two story lines: the passion that is born between two opposite girls and Sangaïle's fascination and fear for planes. The chemistry between the actresses is blatant and we perceive it through the sublime contemplative shots and even if the plot is deliberately slow-paced, Sangaïle's evolution is charming. The clumsiness of some scenes and some easy story turns (such as the teenager that cuts herself) do not spoil the film, instead, they add a particular sensitivity to the bright atmosphere that witnesses the birth of this summer love. The scenery, between the lake and the landscapes that remind of Finland and the cold post-Soviet architecture, makes the film even more realistic and we understand that this duality exists not only between two different characters that get to love each other, but also between the anxiety and the beauty of overcoming our fears. Full review on our blog Los Indiscretos : https://losindiscretos.org

Every year it never fails. At the end of every year when "Best of" list are being released I will check out what films legendary French film journal Cahiers du Cinema has voted to their top ten. I enjoy Cahiers' top ten, somewhat. Hell, it's always interesting, always some film selections that make you say "hmm?" Sometimes these films pay off brilliantly, case in point #1 on the 2014 list: Bruno Dumont's Li'l Quinquin. Well The Summer of Sangaile was #9…and this isn't contemporary master Bruno Dumont; Toto we're not in Northern France anymore. No, we are in Lithuania for Atlante Kavaite's (Fissures) second film. Just reading the general summary of the film and noting that Cahiers had listed it to their annual top ten, I couldn't help but to think Rohmer. How Roh-ng I was. Here we have a young Lithuanian girl of 17, Sangaile (Julija Steponaityte), an aviation enthusiast vacationing with her parents who is going to learn about the pleasures and travails of young love through the quirky and beguiling (somewhat indie girl stereotype) Auste (Aiste Dirziute). The girls meet at air show. The girls begin to party with each other and hangout regularly. The relationship becomes sexual…I guess Kavaite handled it better than Kechine did Blue is the Warmest Colour. Sangaile who has some serious issues, like cutting, amongst other angst-y teenage problems begins to divulge these facts to Auste who is very supportive. Then the revelation comes that nearly tears them apart. Sangaile the wannabe aviator is afraid of heights…but they persevere through this obstacle in their relationship…sort of. The main problem is caring if they did, and that is asking A LOT! I guess Sangaile comes of age…It is as brutal to write as it was to watch. The only redeeming factors of the film are Atlante Kavaite's impeccable sense of the visual. She definitely has a great gift for taking seemingly normal locales and turning them into places of visual wonder. There are some truly beautiful looking scenes in the film, even if some are a bit too much, i.e. the puffy skirts that are lined with something like Christmas lights as the young girls begin to make love in a field as night falls. When the two main characters are apart, the passion and yearning that the young actresses display is clearly palpable makes for the most beautiful and sensual moments of the entire film. Where the film truly falls flat on its face is that the" transformative moments" of Sangaile's life at this point are so bland that it effectively dilutes the true tribulations that this troubled young lady is trying to deal with, thus detaching the viewer completely from the girls' story, as well as dismantling any importance the narrative had a chance of possessing. Other than the lesbian sex this film could easily be a horrible Hollywood teenage-girl-coming-of-age-drama. There is one scene where both girls are lounging on the shore of the lake and Kavaite uses the camera to isolate different body parts and the opening shot in this sequence last for about seven seconds and is of one of the girls' knee, which sent me to Claire's Knee, and yes, that is the closest we come to Rohmer.All I can say is I hated myself for watching this entire movie. I should have turned it off, no clue why I didn't. The positive thing I can say is that Kavaite has the cinematographic eye for transforming the mundane into beauty and taking nature and elevating its innate aesthetic qualities, now write a damn story. It all comes back to that nefarious Cahiers; you duped me (and I'm sure many other readers of your magazine) again, but hey, maybe your next unusual selection will strike gold. I'll keep playing the Cahiers lottery. I always do. Why stop now?

Me and 2 of my friends all agree on a few things about this: 1) The lack of plot and substance for the characters really make this movie feel bland and renders all interactions extremely forced 2) The romanticization of self harm is very distasteful 3) This movie tried really hard to be deep and artistic, but, again, just came out super forced. Nothing seemed natural.We were all watching it together - one friend was trying really hard to stay awake and we just sat there kind of rolling our eyes the entire time. We had to quit it half way because of the scene where they decided to cut themselves together. It just left such a bad taste in our mouths. I decided to finish watching it on my own and it didn't get better. It felt like almost nothing happened in this movie - the most character development happened in the last 20 minutes and even that had a time gap of 2 years. I had really high hopes for this - it looked full of potential and I was super excited about the LGBT representation (in a movie from my country, like, wow!!), but was kind of left disappointed - it just was not executed well. Maybe I missed the point of the movie? The message it was trying to get across? Whatever the case, it wasn't the most enjoyable thing I've seen. I'm sad I feel about it this way.At least every shot was very pretty.