Story
"And when the rain falls...
it's all over."
Seven childhood friends in their early twenties honor their summer tradition and spend a week in a seaside village. Pipa and Johnny , a toxic couple, Anita , Salvador and Miguel , a love triangle, and Ema , a loner, all arrive at Lua 's house, where she welcomes them with open arms, along with her new boyfriend, Chico , who seems to make everyone uncomfortable. Several attempts are made to rekindle their relationships, but the group is faced with differences that are difficult to overcome.
Between the house, the beaches, the lake, the bars and the nightclub, they find themselves surrounded by memories of a complicated past.
The only solution is to face
their pain,
their sadness
and their loss.
The idea for this film came about around 2015, when I left Portugal for the first time to pursue my studies in Paris. With some distance, I was confronted with the changes that had occurred in my life regarding my friendships. At this time, I realized that our groups of friends become part of our family, with the same nuances, positive or negative, that a biological family might have.
At the beginning of the project, the idea was to explore, in a sweet and optimistic way, the essence of friendship in youth and the inevitable separation with age or the various circumstances that lead us down new paths. As I matured with my own ideas, I developed new perspectives on what friendship really is, and perhaps, having lost a bit of my innocence, I began to uncover the most difficult and harmful sides of our bonds. It became clear to me that this movie would be a reflection of this very unraveling of an illusion, of what is unsaid and of our ties to the past, to what's comfortable and familiar.
My summer holidays with friends were the main inspiration, both for the narrative and for the artistic and visual proposal. I often wondered how, as the years went by and as we grew up, the memories of happy and magical summers were progressively tarnished by problems or arguments. I was particularly interested in what exactly constitutes a friendship, what it boils down to, and how certain events, especially traumatic ones, change the way we are present or not, for each other. I started to wonder what would happen if one day I was no longer there. That was the starting point for the development of this story. Farhadi's Finding Elly , a film I discovered when I was already finishing the script, became an essential reference for exploring this same "opening of Pandora's box" after a traumatic event. Vila Nova de Milfontes was the perfect setting for this story, due to the Portuguese nature of this summer and the beauty of coastal Alentejo, but mostly due to the strong emotional connection I have with this place where I grew up and experienced some of the situations that inspired me.
Having multiple protagonists is essential to this narrative. I was always struck by how my friends and I had very different perspectives on the same events we experienced together. There was no way to classify or rank them, nor could I ever say that one was truer or more relevant than another. In a narrative where we explore what it means to be a friend, it only seems right to show what that is through the eyes of each member of a group. In this context, one of the technical challenges in creating the film's visual identity was the fluidity of the camera and the transition from one character's point of view to the next. How can this overall narrative unfold in the transition from one character's internal situation to another, completely different one?
The inability to truly be there for each other is the central theme of the film. Each of the characters experiences this in their own way and storyline, but they all feel misunderstood. They are so caught up in their own problems that they cannot truly be friends. What we want to observe is precisely their progressive disconnection. The bonds that once brought them together are, in the end, what drives them apart. We watch them throughout this week, only to discover that history repeats itself. The power dynamics in relationships, the feeling of guilt and mourning for our loved ones and the history we leave behind are all universal themes that I am sure will be appreciated by the audience. This film also comes at a time when there is a growing popularity of youth centered films, with new and bold narrative and aesthetic proposals. We believe that this film fulfills these expectations and that this is where its relevance in the current zeitgeist comes from.
“Summer Rain” is a passion project that we are immensely proud of. We hope it showcases what we were able to achieve with the limited budget, time and resources we had. We are incredibly excited to share this film, opening doors to discuss the many themes this story explores, from friendship and love to loss and grief.
- AMM