Mirjam (Martina Geddick) and André (Peter Davor) aren’t the kind of parents who worry that their typically sullen fifteen year-old son (Lucas Kotaranin) is likely having sex during their summer trip with his mature-for-her-age but nevertheless not yet thirteen year-old girlfriend, Livia (Svea Lohde). On the other hand, mother Mirjam starts playing the responsibility card when Livia, who has some disconcerting ideas about relationships, strikes up a sudden close friendship with a handsome grown-up (Canadian television actor Robert Seeliger, speaking fluent German). Before you can say WTF, Mirjam finds herself acting on her own attraction to the stranger. If nothing else, events play out believably and the upper middle class European milieu feels right-on (including some ironic U.S.A.-bashing) – up to an ending that’s supposed to be an emotional sucker-punch, but which plays more like an earnest attempt to imbue 97 minutes of well-realized, though apparently pointless, über-realistic banality with something like meaning.
A lot of critics use the word “thriller” to describe this meticulously achieved slice of upscale life from director Stefan Krohmer and writer Daniel Nocke. That’s stretching the definition, but “Summer of ’04” mostly fails without regard to genre. A moment of suspense, some hot but relatively discrete onscreen sex between consenting adults, and an unexpected revelation aside, the problem with this well-acted, character-driven film is that these five people feel very real, but they’re still lousy company. It’s not that they’re largely unsympathetic, it’s that they’re mostly uninteresting. See “The Ice Storm” instead.
