X
- 2021
- Greenwich Entertainment
- 1 h 26 m
- 2021
- Greenwich Entertainment
- 1 h 26 m
Summary A teenager spends his summer listening to heavy metal music and trying to get along with his librarian mom.
Directed By: Simon Bird
Written By: Lisa Owens, Joff Winterhart
- 2021
- Greenwich Entertainment
- 1 h 26 m
- 2021
- Greenwich Entertainment
- 1 h 26 m
Days of the Bagnold Summer
57
User Score
Available after 4 ratings
tbd
Where to Watch
Summary A teenager spends his summer listening to heavy metal music and trying to get along with his librarian mom.
Directed By: Simon Bird
Written By: Lisa Owens, Joff Winterhart
Where to Watch
Top Cast
Metascore
Mixed or Average
Based on 11 Critic Reviews
57
45% Positive
5 Reviews
5 Reviews
45% Mixed
5 Reviews
5 Reviews
9% Negative
1 Review
1 Review
Metascore
Mixed or Average
Based on 11 Critic Reviews
57
45% Positive
5 Reviews
5 Reviews
45% Mixed
5 Reviews
5 Reviews
9% Negative
1 Review
1 Review
Not much happens in the understated British comedy Days of the Bagnold Summer, and that’s rather the point. It’s a truthful and sometimes moving slice of life (and cake) elevated by vivid lead performances.
Here’s a movie that tells us that the days of summer, like the boys of summer in Don Henley’s song, are going to get outlived by the love they inspire. It’s what happens in this thoroughly sweet-natured, charming and unassuming British film.
The approach is scrupulously even-handed. The film is just as interested in mild-mannered Sue’s journey as it is in Daniel’s coming of age. The screenplay, adapted by Lisa Owens (Bird’s wife) from an award winning graphic novel by Joff Winterhart, is wryly low key, with a keen eye for the subtle stabs and small daily humiliations that gradually mount.
If the film never completely coheres into a satisfying whole, Days Of The Bagnold Summer has a lot going for it: a nicely judged sense of character, an eye for detail and strong performances, especially from Dolan. It also suggests Simon Bird is a filmmaker worth watching.
Amiably anecdotal, the movie gets wry results from Dolan and other players, including Rob Brydon as a would-be ladies man and Tamsin Greig as a “hipper” mom than Sue.
Even if the general ultra-clean cartoonishness of it all is deliberate, the film’s whisper-thin premise and sitcom-like characters are the cinema equivalent of Sweethearts candy: rather too sugared, and immediately forgotten.
Neither as sweet or profound as the fanciful American indies like Ghost World that clearly inspired it, nor all that insightful in its interpretation of a single mother’s universal struggles, Bagnold Summer is sadly a forgettable film, often too ironically close to being the kind of bore its central character Daniel’s accidental summer in the English suburbs threatens to be.
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Production Company
Stigma Films,
Trigger Films,
Storyhouse,
Particular Crowd
Release Date Feb 19, 2021
Duration 1 h 26 m
Awards
Locarno International Film Festival
• 1 Nomination
British Independent Film Awards
• 1 Nomination
