Sean Parker
What is it about growing up that makes the coming-of-age mechanic so damn watchable? Is it the resonant feelings of nostalgia? Perhaps the psychology of wishing we knew then what we know now? Regardless, I’m a sucker for a good coming-of-age story and, without a doubt, always up for something that turns the dial in the WTF levels to eleven. Miguel Llansó is easily the filmmaker I’d want to see take any situation and infuse it with mind-boggling weirdness, mostly because he does it so effortlessly and vividly. A few years ago, the director created Jesus Shows You the Way to the Highway, a 007 knockoff exploitation film, complete with kung fu elements, N64 graphics from the game adaption of Goldeneye, and poor dubbing to create one of the most irreverent film experiences so far this millennia. Now he’s back, taking on technology, mindfulness, and cusping adulthood in Infinite Summer.
It’s a bitter pill to swallow when you realize you’ve outgrown someone and even more difficult to reckon with the feeling someone has outgrown you. Miguel Llansó’s Infinite Summer begins with Mia’s (Teele Kalijuvee-O’Brock) excitement over meeting her seasonal friends who spend the summers near her in Tallinn, Estonia. Receiving a voice message, Mia packs a bag, says goodbye to her worried father (Ivo Uukkivi), and scurries to meet them near the beach. Yet, she quickly realizes she’s the only one up for swimming. Mia sits, silently judging her friends, Sarah and Grere (Hannah Gross and Johanna Rosin), as they speak of adult escapades and create an atmosphere of obsession surrounding men and parties. It’s no shock they’d both be game to mess with an extreme dating app and giggle whenever they swipe left.
With her friends’ interests veering in a direction Mia doesn’t wish to traverse, she attempts to force herself to like the same things her friends like. She connects with Dr. Mindfulness (Ciaron Davies), who offers Mia an interactive respirator to help her achieve a higher level of consciousness. Her friends reprimand her for her actions, decisively proclaiming she’s going to “f*ck up her brain,” but after witnessing Mia’s experience, they hypocritically decide to get their own. The respirator, Eleusis, reaches out to Mia but concludes her innocence makes her ineligible for the experience. Her friends have a different reaction, eventually resulting in a form of possession right when Interpol starts investigating Dr. Mindfulness.
One of the reasons Llansó is such an incredible writer is that his stories typically go in directions the viewer doesn’t see coming. This is unabashedly true of Infinite Summer. Whenever you think this bullet train of a film is about to let you off at a stop you’ve seen a thousand times before, it mixes things up and stops at a different station. Infinite Summer evolves into something far more thrilling and important than where it starts, doing so with increasing symbolism and metaphor about the psychological and predatory aspects of having boundless access to the world at your fingertips. The film’s second and third acts go to a place even David Lynch couldn’t dream up. The result is almost as psychedelic as the inference, producing a visually stunning future. It’s one hell of a transhumanist trip melding AI singularity, drug use, sexuality, and identity into one auspiciously original film.
For many, Infinite Summer will likely produce many questions about what they just witnessed. But some, predominantly the older been-there-done-that crowd who didn’t have cellphones in their pockets while growing up, will understand the nuances of Llansó’s transformative body horror elements as they experiment with apps that allow them to grow up quicker than their bodies are ready for. In no way is the film preachy, mind you. It’s merely comparing the race to adulthood we all experience to the current era of sex and weed on demand via apps like Tinder or Weedmaps. Now, with the onset of AI, what will the future look like?
Infinite Summer showcases Miguel Llansó’s ability to make a more adult film over the cartoonish melodrama of irreverence his past films tend to entail. It’s slightly ironic that this coming-of-age film that has so much to do with ethereal plains is ostensibly the most grown-up and realistic in the director’s filmography. It genuinely feels like a coronation for the director who tests the bounds of the imagination, and I hope continues to do so, both irreverently and meaningfully.
From a technical aspect, Infinite Summer is beautiful. Llansó’s longtime cinematography collaborator, Israel Seoane, is also on the top of his game. Frames of tech intervening in nature are understated, while the scope of CGI swirling clouds is immensely cosmic. The color and tonal aspects of the film are wonderful as well, giving the film a feeling of anxiety, like summer drawing to a close.
Beyond anything else, Infinite Summer is an experience. The film shares some of the same foresight about time and perspective found in Vulcanizadora but is more tempered to an eclectic crowd of young and old viewers. As the film suggests, people mature at their own pace, and I think Infinite Summer is more likely to grow with them, offering multiple perspectives as the viewer gets older. It will be interesting to revisit Infinite Summer in ten or twenty years if only to see what future technology makes for us.
Infinite Summer held its World Premiere at the Fantasia International Film Festival on July 27. For additional information, see the film’s page on the Fantasia website.
INFINITE SUMMER – Trailer
Three young women’s week at the beach turns into a transhumanist mystery romp in one Estonian summer. While spending the summer together at a beach house, Grete, Sarah and Mia meet a guy who calls himself Dr. Mindfulness and sells his own meditation app.
