SUMMER SCARS (2007) 6/10

Published on: November 8th, 2009

a tense moment in Julian Richards' SUMMER SCARS Eden Lake meets Dead Man's Shoes with tense if ultimately slightly underwhelming results in Summer Scars, a scrappily efficient no-budget coming-of-ager from tireless writer-director Julian Richards. Tales of kids' mishaps in the woods have long been a staple of shoestring, DIY video-filmmaking, but this variation scores by being notably well-cast and acted by an ensemble almost exclusively composed of teenagers.
   The sole exception among significant speaking parts is the director's leading-man of choice Kevin Howarth – who's as sweatily scruffy here as he was sleekly suave as the murderous protagonist of Richards' excessively self-satisfied Last Horror Movie (2004). With his bloodshot, staring eyes, clammy, grimy skin, decayed teeth, and lank mop of hair, Peter looks like trouble as soon as we first see him – not that his youthful new "friends" pick up on the danger signals until too late.
   A loose gang of 14-year-olds who most probably should be at school, this posse may initially come over as stereotypical tearaway hoodies (not for nothing is one of the soundtrack cuts entitled 'Drunken Teenage Swagga'), but Al Wilson's screenplay – "based on an idea" by Richards – quickly establishes each as distinctive personalities, allowing the performers space to build effective characterisations even within the confines of a skimpy running-time. Indeed, Summer Scars can be interpreted as the antidote to paranoia-stoking dreck like Eden Lake, in that it presents urban kids as the hapless focus of peril rather than its mindlessly malevolent cause.
   The three credited editors do seem to have been a tad over-enthusiastic with their trimming, however: one heavily foreshadowed subplot involving satanism (which would tie right in, thematically, with Richards' previous work) never comes into the expected focus. Instead, we're left with some stray lines of dialogue relating to religion (as well as Peter, there's a Paul among the principal characters, and we even hear of a dog supposedly named 'Jesus'). Such references seem out of place, and endow proceedings with something of a Whistle Down the Wind ambience – although Peter is much closer kin to, say, Paddy Considine's hair-trigger ex-serviceman from Dead Man's Shoes than any kind of Messiah figure.
   And Richards, for all his evident facility with young actors (of whom Amy Harvey stands out, and not just because she's the only female) is no Shane Meadows. He may be able to establish and set up mood, atmosphere and character with reasonable aplomb, but his directorial bag of tricks is decidedly limited. He relies too heavily, for example, on Simon Lambros's score (ominous drumming hints at Peter's troubled, presumably military past), especially when events take increasingly (melo-) dramatic turns in the closing stages.
   Wilson's script starts feeling more like a screenwriting exercise than an organically developed story – only one of the kids has a mobile, apparently - and the inevitable violent finale is delivered in perfunctory and predictable fashion, with Peter having crossed a line from a being an ambiguously-motivated, tormented, clearly mentally-ill, somewhat pathetic loner into much more conventionally villainous/ogre-like terrain.
   Bookended by surprisingly lengthy opening and closing credits, Summer Scars (the precise relevance of that poetic title also seems to have been lost in the editing process) clocks in at just 68 minutes – which makes it two minutes shorter even than Meadows' Somers Town, the briefest film to obtain UK distribution in recent years.
   While worth a look for those interested in contemporary British youth issues and/or what can be achieved with minimal film-making resources, it perhaps falls a little awkwardly between categories - this is essentially a drama for young adults, probably better suited to small-screen exposure than cinematic release – much in the same way as its teenage subjects find themselves exposed, in extremis, as considerably less mature and streetwise than they'd like to imagine. It turns out that "swagga," even of the "drunken teenage" variety, only gets you so far…

Neil Young
8th November 2009

SUMMER SCARS
6/10
UK 2007
directed by Julian Richards
68m (BBFC)
[16/28]

seen at The Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle, 8th November 2009 (complimentary ticket)

with thanks to all at Pickin' Flicks // Juice Festival, and Mike Tait at The Tyneside Cinema
http://www.juicefestival.co.uk/site/full-programme/pickin-flicks-p386071