ENDLESS SUMMER SYNDROME (Kaveh Daneshand 2023)

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GEM DEGER, MATTHÉO CAPELLI, AND FRÉDÉRIKA MILANO IN ENDLESS SUMMER SYNDROME

KAVEH DANESHAND: THE ENDLESS SUMMER SYNDROME (2023)

Another parent-stepchild affair, with dire consequences

This treatment of the theme of a parent having sex with an adopted child comes a little stale after Catherine Breillat's more cheerful, life-affirming recent version of a mother who enjoys hot May-December love with her stepson of sometime back, though in truth that was based on a Danish film of four years earlier, May el-Toukhy's Queen of Hearts. Breillat is being typically provocative. Her 2023 Last Summer L'Été dernier focuses on the illicit romance, with one of the gifted Kircher brothers the teenage seducer of Léa Drucker's vibrant blonde stepmom, focuses on the romance - which doesn't get caught out, but has to end, most reluctantly on the boy's part.

First-time director and cowriter Kaveh Daneshmand, an Iranian living in Prague, has adopted many of the trappings of the Danish film, but changed sexes and partners and sexualities. He has collaborated with the young Turkish-born, also Prague-resident Gem Deger, who cowrote and also plays the adopted youth, Aslan. Creating a tense intimacy (or confinement) by shooting in square 4:3 ratio, Daneshmand loses most of the other films' focus on the sexual affair, and any sense of the pleasure it gave. El-Toukhy's tale turns dark, but this version turns much darker, making the film a grim cautionary tale. Breillat's film admits the rules are being seriously broken, but shows us the plus side.

All three films present many of the same details: the very posh summer house, the accomplished lawyer wife, the working couple, the homemade tattoo. But this one is a kind of erotic mystery thriller. At least it uses very brief intercut present-moment scenes with family members questioned at a police station, hinting of something dire to come, though when it comes, we already know. Delphine (Sophie Colon) is very much the central character. An anonymous phone call informs her at the film's outset that, while very drunk at a recent party, her husband Antoine (Mathéo Capelli) has revealed he has been doing something "bad" with one of their two adopted kids. They are Aslan and the beautiful and black Adia (dancer, model, TV actor Frédérika Milano). Both are attractive as seen poolside and around eighteen.

Depending on the reception of this film in France (where it isn't out yet but listed as "coming soon"), Sophie Colon, who hasn't had much screen work up to now, may become busy, or not. She doesn't have the looks or sparkle of Drucker or the comedic potential of Sandrine Kiberlain, but she may have something else. Otherwise the actors are fine in the looks department. Gem Deger, with his flourish of thick black hair, his tattoos, and his edge of uncertainty and provocation, is the most interesting. He has already had his own directorial debut, the 2020 Playdurizm, which he wrote, directed, and stars in, a candy-colored English-language oddity that's something like what might come out if Gregg Araki made a horror film.

Delphine becomes her own detective, watching and listening and even resorting to a homemade wiretap: she hides a cellphone under pillows in the living room tuned to her own mobile, then waits listening off in her car. Her efborts succeed only in teasing her and us. The revelation of what's actually going on comes more by accident, and it's a shocker.

But the approach in The Endless Summer Syndrome feels slightly plodding, and worse yet, its twisting and ramping up of the action of its source (or sources) feels crude and simplistic. It loses the sense of complexity of the other films, where the glamorous, luxurious setting and attractive young people are an understandable, and at least for a while, almost acceptable temptation. As in the many other films about stepchild affairs, this isn't full-on incest; but for Delphie, it's a betrayal.

Syndrome lowers the boom as the "endless summer" perfection of the title is shattered and a the security of a family destroyed. It's a film that's effective and suspenseful for a while, but ends, for me anyway, with a thud of disappointment. The filmmakers were aiming for commercial potential, and this film, with its surpriise twist, its handsome cast, and its glamorous setting has that, and could have a healthy home viewing shelf-life as well.

Endless Summer Syndrome/Le syndrome de l'été sans fin, 98 mins., debuted at (Tallinn (Estonia). Nov. 16, 2024, also showing at Goa, Cieszyn, Raindance (London), Nashville and Mar del Plata. US release Dec. 12 (internet) and Dec. 13, 2024.