Wherever we are in our lives, all of it — our successes, our failures — begins at home. Someone born into a home with extensive resources can achieve absolutely nothing of their own while someone with scant resources can achieve undeniable greatness, so a certain amount of personal accountability must be considered; yet, there’s no doubt that one’s starting point is defined by the space that curates them. Paraphrasing a statement by Sophie Colon’s Delphine early in the director/co-writer Kaveh Daneshmand’s (Occasional Showers) latest project, Endless Summer Syndrome, a child’s first experience with violence is at home. The converse is true, as well, that a child’s first experience with love is there, too. Of course, violence and love take on different shades depending on intent and act, as well as reception. As adults often discover, love can be violent and violence can be a form of love, both in healthy and unhealthy relationships. Daneshmand’s familial thriller utilizes the philosophical concepts of parent-child relationships as the foundation from which to derive tension so as to drive the characters and audiences alike beyond their understood academic systems of thought toward a precipice from which there is no return.
Sophie Colon as Delphine in ENDLESS SUMMER SYNDROME. Photo courtesy of Altered Innocence.
It’s nearing the end of August and things are in transition for Delphine (Colon) and her family. She, a successful lawyer, is seeking to expand her influence on family affairs in France; her husband, Antoine (Mathéo Capelli), is an author in the final stages of his latest book; their daughter, Adia (Frédérika Milano), is preparing for a new school year, and their son, Aslan (Gem Deger), is about to move to the United States to study entomology. On the Friday of their last weekend together before Aslan leaves, Delphine receives a cryptic phone call from a woman claiming to be one of Antoine’s colleagues who tells Delphine that, while at a recent party, he drunkenly shared he’s engaged in an elicit action with one of his children. While certain at first that this anonymous caller is a crank, Delphine’s parental and legal instincts kick in, setting the stage for a complex last few days that are anything but idyllic.
L-R: Gem Deger as Aslan, Matteo Capelli as Antoine, and Frédérika Milano as Adia in ENDLESS SUMMER SYNDROME. Photo courtesy of Altered Innocence.
With a script from Laurine Bauby (L’approche) and Daneshmand from a story created by Deger and Daneshmand, Endless Summer Syndrome is intent on creating tension through the artistic juxtaposition of environmental and social conditions. Some things work beautifully to convey that danger lurks even on the brightest and warmest of days, while others are so devoid of strain they border on tedium. This is, unfortunately, an issue that the audience is confronted with as a battle between narrative execution and performance/production design. The first act of the film establishes that this is a wealthy family — Delphine wrapping an interview/talk, Antoine expressing frustration at potential re-writes for his book, their interior modest home decorated with opulence on their larger than expected estate with its pool and precisely trimmed landscaping — who are quite close with one another. Through the performances of the cast, we believe the intimacy of a “standard” four-person family as they rib each other over normal things that parents and siblings do or generally engage with each other. Once the call comes in, however, all of a sudden, things that would be typical of this family, such as topless sunbathing or the application of cream to an injured appendage, take on entirely different perspectives. In an American household, given the puritanical upbringings most are raised with, a daughter is not likely to feel comfortable sunbathing topless around their father, but this may be more common in a less sexually-rigid French upbringing — unless there’s a sense that there’s a predator around. Set around the beautiful blue of the pool and lavishness of the simple pool area, what was once a safe family oasis turns into a predatory lair, one which oozes with tension and disquiet through the perspective of Delphine. A beautiful touch between narrative, editing, and scoring is that sometimes what we see is more akin to what Delphine *thinks* is happening, thereby creating an aura of uncertainty between her fear and reality that create justifications for the lengths Delphine opts to go to determine whether the accusation is true or not. This serves as a powerful shot of ambiguity that injects the narrative with a jolt of necessary disquiet that carries the tension where the narrative starts to relax. Ultimately, though, it’s Colon’s performance that keeps the entire film together. Her joy as Delphine revels in this bonded unit she’s created, as well as her pain as she uncovers secrets that her family’s been keeping. It’s not the discoveries themselves, nor the result of what the discoveries mean, but Colon herself that locks the audience into the story.
L-R: Matteo Capelli as Antoine and Sophie Colon as Delphine in ENDLESS SUMMER SYNDROME. Photo courtesy of Altered Innocence.
One would think this to be odd as Syndrome is a family thriller with a mighty naughty twist, even before learning that both children are adopted (a fact not kept from any official language describing the plot). How is it that only Colon stands out beyond the fact that it’s she we primarily follow with only the occasional glimpse into private moments with the other three? That’s an issue with the execution of the script as the story is not only cut across three days (Friday, Saturday, Sunday), but with three interludes involving three members of the household beginning before the characters are introduced. The intention is likely to create external tension for the audience through a mystery we need to solve alongside Delphine, except it only reduces tension by identifying the end of the film for the audience and its cause. Once this is introduced, the truth of the accusation becomes far less important upon realizing that something tragic resides at the end. One can surmise that the intention is then to place more onus on the philosophical destruction of the family unit by taking what one might call liberal (spoken as a pejorative) views on parenting and seeing how far someone’s tolerance truly goes; except that the film doesn’t explore this element with any real gusto, opting instead for the titillation of the mystery and its reveal. By the time the audience arrives at Sunday, the truth is meaningless as the inevitability of the ending is written and basically declared for us. In this way, one might feel a sense of disquiet or tension at the notion that you know something’s coming and it’s not going to result in smiles, but, one might also find themselves impatiently waiting for the figurative candlestick in the library with Colonel Mustard to be pulled out of the mystery deck the narrative’s revealed itself to possess.
L-R: Frédérika Milano as Adia and Gem Deger as Aslan in ENDLESS SUMMER SYNDROME. Photo courtesy of Altered Innocence.
Endless Summer Syndrome is a fascinatingly frustrating watch or a frustratingly fascinating watch — that parts unclear. The performances, the staging, the cinematography, all speak to the confines of familial bonds and the enclosure we can find ourselves in despite thinking we actually exist in a borderless sandbox. These performers and Daneshmand offer up a tale that is disgusting (no matter which side of the political spectrum you exist on) for its presentation of parental abuses and the narrative creates an interesting point of discussion regarding which ways we will validate our choices of violence upon our supposed loved-ones. However, what starts as an engaging morality play, to slowly peel back social convention and the relationship between parent and child (regardless of bloodline), undercuts itself by doing than more than calling its shot, it tells the audience who bought the proverbial gun, loaded it, and fired.
In select theaters and on digital December 13th, 2024.
Available on Blu-ray and DVD February 11th, 2025.
For more information, head to the official Altered Innocence Endless Summer Syndrome webpage.
Final Score: 3 out of 5.
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Categories: In Theaters, Reviews, streaming
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