Mia (Teele Kalijuvee-O’Brock) packs a bag and heads for an Estonian beach retreat. She’s looking forward to catching up with friends Sarah (Joanna Gross) and Grere (Johanna Rosin). However, once she arrives, it becomes clear that their previous camaraderie is not what it used to be; Sarah and Grere are focused on partying and an app called Extreme Dating. In a reluctant attempt to join in, Mia connects with the app and meets a man called Doctor Mindfulness (Ciaran Davies), who supplies her with a chemical-assisted respirator device with which she can supposedly access a higher plane of existence…
As a brief synopsis of a movie in the coming of age subgenre, the above should give some idea that Infinite Summer does not remotely head down the path you would expect. Adding that this movie is written and directed by Miguel Llansó, who unleashed Jesus Shows You The Way To The Highway on an unsuspecting world may have you reaching for the box marked “Close” or waiting for it to bring the sensory assault.
As much as I enjoyed much of that 8-bit inflected grab bag of ideas, Llansó’s latest opus takes a far less frantic approach, allowing his fascinating central ideas the room to breathe rather than battering the viewer into submission with yet another plot strand, N64-inspired action sequence or bizarre back and forth of dialogue. Infinite Summer is confident enough in the creation of its own alternate world not to fall back on cheesy humour and this makes for a richer experience. Yes, the script can’t resist chucking in the odd elliptical exchange but somehow it wouldn’t be authentic Llansó if it didn’t somewhere along the line.
Using that backdrop of that supposedly halcyon final summer before the responsibilities of adulthood kick in, Infinite Summer examines the fading of friendships and the opening up of scary, exciting new prospects by posing the question “What would you do if you could access everything, everywhere?.” We’ll leave the “all at once” to another project. The AI voice in the respirator, introduces themselves as Eleusis – a temple for a second birth – and is welcoming but also guarded, tempting its user to unlock its secrets but also warning, like an ASMR Jack Nicholson, that they may not be able to handle the truth.
Did I mention the subplot involving Tallinn Zoo and its disappearing animals? My bad, I didn’t. Yes, this is going on too, as investigators Katrin (Katariina Unt) and Jack (Steve Vanoni) get their sleuthing band back together to find out just what the hell is going on. Their droll asides may occasionally feel as though the story is stalling for time, but I loved the two of them and I’d happily watch them transplanted into a Midsomer Murders-style series if only to have the ITV/BBC 8pm cosy crime audience scratching their heads and wondering if they’ve had something slipped into their Ovaltine.
I’ve seen this described as a “transhumanist romp” but I have a slight issue with the word “romp” as that, to me at least, conjures up an atmosphere of pervading, ultimately grating wackiness. Don’t get me wrong, there is humour to be found in Infinite Summer but how many wacky romps grapple with the concepts of transformation right down to an atomic level? Carry On Cosmos this is not, unless I missed the entry in that series in which Sid James weighs up the pros and cons of artificial intelligence. I’d love to have seen that one, by the way.
In the lead, Kalijuvee-O’Brock is excellent, giving a performance which will gain the sympathy of various viewers as she makes those questionable, stubborn, youthful decisions with which many of us will identify. Gross and Rosin make their mark in smaller but important roles, initially annoying both Mia – and, to be fair, me – with their incessant talk of guys and their snickering, swiping left or right antics but providing comment on how all of us nix certain ideas because they don’t line up with our thoughts and then hypocritically go along with them anyway because, you know, FOMO, and we’d be just as good as those things, if not better.
Both Infinite Summer and Jesus Shows You The Way To The Highway trade in blurring the boundaries of reality but the latter’s ramshackle, random ducking and diving is replaced by beautiful scenes of literal spacing out and a central character grappling with an opportunity to live without limits as she discovers more and more about a universe in which shared experiences transcend flesh and bone.
The resolution reads as both uplifting and crushing, an odd mix of parental concern for the potentially dire fate of their children, and the adoption by those children of a world which is evolving at a pace that threatens to leave behind everyone but those who are riding the cutting edge of technology. Infinite Summer is a must for those seeking an adventure into the strange, one spiced with oblique body horror trappings and psychedelic journeys beyond. You’ll be left with so many questions as the end credits roll but oh! What questions they are. As with the respirator of Doctor Mindfulness, allow the effects of Miguel Llansó’s unique product to permeate your consciousness and you could be transported to somewhere genuinely unfamiliar.
Infinite Summer (2024) featured as part of this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival.