Summer Love: A Polish Western
No, it doesn’t take place at a ski resort in January.
I love my people, yes I do. So whenever I see Western releases of comics, music, or films made by Poles or from Poland, I do what I can to talk about it. When I saw the Polish western ‘Summer Love’ arrive in the states [the film was entitled Dead Man’s Bounty ??!] I was a bit put off by a few things. One, it’s being marketed as a ‘horror’ because of it’s weird elements, and Two – Val Kilmer on the cover when his role in the film is so minor, it’s laughable. :/
Summer Love
The catalyst is Czech actor [DROOL] Karel Roden, known only as The Stranger, he arrives at a dying waterhole of a town [seriously—this place exists because it’s next to a footprint of drinking water in the middle of the desert] to collect the bounty on a dead man [VAL KILMER—he’s corpse, that’s it. He’s dead at the start of the film; he’s dead at the end of the film.] As I stated before, it’s all allegory: characters aren’t important—only what they represent. [SPOILER] The Stranger comes to down and loses his dead man Bounty to a masochistic Sheriff; he then has sex with The Woman which makes him the mark of The Big Man–thus setting off a serious of unfortunate events that lead to his death, redemption for The Sheriff and The Woman, and comeuppance for The Big Man.
The Woman is the most interesting character here. It’s rare to find a white woman of size in a film these days depicted as an attractive sexual object [or sexual at all for that matter] without the plot being solely about ‘obesity drama’ or the ‘fat chick’ stereotype dolled out in comedies. There just aren’t any BBW roles out there for white women that allow them to be seen as anything other than desperately lonely, or the butt of some sophomoric male episode. Not the case here; Slavic woman tend to be big—a little fat is a beauty type, like blue eyes or big lips; and actress Katarzyna Figura lives up to the part. The Sheriff is another representation of man—the fallen noble; no matter what accomplishments he’s garnished in life—he’ll always be a prisoner of what he regrets not doing in life [or having]. In the case of The Sheriff, it’s The Woman. The last of the type represented is The Big Man. He’s a true monster here, and there isn’t one moment in the film that you actual feel any amount of sympathy for him. He covets the respect given to The Sheriff, he lusts after The Woman–and eventually attacks her. He’s the lowest common form of person there is–without any true mental illness to help justify his condition. You see men like this and you just turn your head. They’re failures, invisible–until they hurt you.
Told in a highly visual style, Summer Love recounts a tale of love, pain, redemption and death…
They’re not kidding; it’s true to form as a unique Polish art film. It’s a pity that most Western viewers who enjoy these sort of films will miss Summer Love, because of the box design and the way it’s being marketed in the West [weird western with Val Kilmer as a dead guy]…and for those who do rent because of that marketing schtick, they won’t get it at all because it’s too weird and Val is really just a dead guy in a plot that makes no sense because everyone is talking in monologues and there’s no clear PointA to PointB style of narrative. :/
I think Summer Love is a beautiful film, stay for one harrowing scene [it contains the ugliest assault of a woman captured on film—mainly because it’s not sexualized—there’s nothing pretty or sexy about it--but IMHO, if rape must be presented in a film, should it not be presented as a crime rather than a violent-sex scene?] and if you’re into highly stylized films such as this, definitely rent it. If you’re looking for a shoot em up that’s gritty with a more linear style of story—then stick with The Propostion
