The Beautiful Summer

Attention everyone, Italian Cine has entered the chat!

Dear readers, you have no idea that shock I got when I realized that I have not seen any gay movies from Italy! I combed through my posts, used all tag searches but all I managed to dig up were series, not movies! I lost sleep on this trying to see if my mind will reveal some hidden memories of an Italian movie I have seen before but forgot to write about, but I came away with nothing!

I was shocked!

This is not to say that there no Italian gay movies! I just haven’t come across them yet! In case you were wondering, this is your queue to recommend me some if you have.

Whatever the case, I have finally come across one and let me tell you all, it was a homerun!

 

 
 
 
 
 

LA BELLA ESTATE, also known as THE BEAUTIFUL SUMMER, came and brought with it a chart-topper, personal-favourite scene which will remain with me forever and that is the dance scene! It was a whole new kind of make-out scene which screamed chemistry at the top of the lungs without being spoony about it!

That scene alone makes this movie a winner but there is still the rest of the movie and the rest of the scenes with our main girls; country girl Ginia aka Ginetta (played by Yile Yala Vianello) and the city girl Amelia (played by Deva Cassel), that is just more sugar on the top!

Ginia is 17 and recently moved to the city of Italy – Turin, with her brother who is pursuing college studies. It is the year 1938 and as you can imagine all kinds of shit is going on in the country, but thankfully, the movie just mentioned it in the passing and focused on what was important, which is that one summer in Ginia’s life.

As the synopsis says…

Ginia, seventeen, experiences the ecstasy and turmoil that characterize the mysterious journey into adulthood. Meeting with Amelia confronts her with new and shocking emotions. But only by recognizing this love, can she be herself.

This is all about Ginia and her meeting with Amelia! This story revolves around these two, though mostly through Ginia’s view of course. Ginia is the one we follow. We see the effects these new feelings have on her personal life away from Amelia but on the other hand, we can only see how Amelia is affected when she is with Ginia.

While other story tellers might not give us anything on the other side, here the movie shows us subtly, how Amelia too is affected by these changing dynamics between them and their friends and acquaintances.

It is kind of funny because Amelia comes off as this assured girl that goes after what she wants but when it came to her feelings for Ginia, she too was on the nervous side. Meanwhile, while Ginia might come off as the soft person, she is the one that is less afraid to do things, but of course, when it came to her feelings for Amelia, she too needed a bit of a kick!

Basically, what I am saying is that they were so cute to watch them as they fell in love with each other! Another interesting thing is that it is hard to tell who fell in love with who first. Sure, most might think it was Ginia but for better or for worse, we only assume this because most of the movie follows only her and not Amelia when she is alone.

If we are going by face value, we could say that from their first meeting, maybe it was Ginia, because she was quite taken by Amelia’s entrance a la cover-worthy James Bond girl coming out of the water! But then again, everyone on that beach was smitten with Amelia!

Still, while we are on the same scene, it was Amelia who first approached Ginia and when she asks for a cigarette and Ginia says she doesn’t smoke, the way she says, ‘That’s a shame’, is very suggestive! We must remember that as we find out later, Amelia was very Bi through and through, in that she had a transmissible disease, which she says she had gotten from another woman! Seeing as she was sick when they met, I am assuming this woman was before Amelia met Ginia.

Basically, what I am trying to say is that Amelia seemed taken with Ginia on their first meeting as well. We also get this shot where Amelia watches Ginia very intently on that beach as she rests her head on one of the Guy’s laps!

Being the country girl, Ginia was all about work and home life, so we got ourselves some delicious scenes of Amelia taking her around the city and showing Ginia how to have some fun.

Having had a reputation and people calling her names because of what she did, Ginia found herself being warned to stay away from Amelia, but how could she? Amelia showed her another world she did not know about before then. Amelia was fun to be around and good on Ginia because she fought back and defended Amelia, even against her brother and best friend.

Meanwhile, Amelia too tried to watch out for Ginia but warning her about the city life and the people, which turned out to be much needed red flags for later but fear not, our girls had a happy ending despite the bad vibes everywhere! Especially the one about Amelia. Seriously, I was pretty sure that Amelia would not survive the movie but thank God, she did!

Ginia and us viewers were thinking that she was Constantine, you know, dying from all the smoking she does, but that was a misdirection! Interestingly she was saved due to her outgoing personality, which got her to meet a doctor at the same place as the one where we got the greatest scene of the year, the dance!

Bringing up one of the main points that make me love a ship, which is when the two affect each other’s lives, Amelia survived because of Ginia. If she had never met Ginia, I strongly believe that Amelia would not have survived! Ginia kept pushing her to go see a doctor about her condition! Ginia kept trying to get her to stop smoking. All the other people that were around Amelia kept her on the path of destruction. They were all smokers, so they saw no danger given that they did not have the effects like Amelia did.

On the other hand, as i mentioned, Amelia tried to keep Ginia away from the life that she was familiar with and for her to watch out for this fascinating new world which would chew her and spit her out without mercy! The sad thing about this is that Ginia was seeking out this world because of her turbulent feelings for Amelia! She was looking to prove that they were not what they were, so she went seeking intimacy with the guys!

As you can imagine, that did not work out according to plan! But I won’t hold it against her because it is best to try it before you knock it so that there are no what ifs which would create doubts about her relationship with Amelia! She tried to be with a guy, but it did not work out! There was none of the ecstatic emotions which swelled whenever she was with Amelia!

For her part, good on her, amelia stayed back a bit and let Ginia explore, even though it did hurt her aplenty and even when they had that first kiss and it seemed to clear some roads, we then had to deal with the sickness and what could Amelia do but try to keep Ginia safe? The disease is transmissible, and she did get it from a woman, why risk making Ginia sick too, especially when the fatality was very high! Amelia had no choice but to push Ginia away, which of course threw Ginia’s life into chaos, when the center of her world did not want to be with her.

Not that her life wasn’t already halfway there! After her true feelings were revealed, she did not handle it super well! Add in the cold shoulder Amelia and well, you can imagine where Ginia was, especially when this was her first love!

Theirs’ was a bit of a complicated relationship to be sure. It was sometimes painful watching them deny each other but you understood their decisions. Amelia did not want to get Ginia sick despite being obvious how deeply she felt for her. Meanwhile, Ginia being at the high of her first love, she did not take time to think of the why so she took this distancing as a sign that Amelia did not want to be with her. Add in the jealous of when Amelia would be with other people, despite Amelia saying that there was someone else on her mind, meaning Ginia, well…

But as the synopsis lays out, Ginia eventually accepts her identity and all that was left was for Amelia to come and make things right and she eventually did! She underwent treatment, which required a sacrifice in the form of time, something which was a big ask for a girl like Amelia, but she did, and she was rewarded with good health, which in the end rewarded both happiness with each other for the rest of their lives hopefully!

I particularly like the fact that the first time they met was a mirror of the last time they met! It was the same exact spot from the beginning of the movie and once again it was Amelia, who mysteriously showed up from out of nowhere, but this time, this time she only had eyes for Ginia! Amelia was healthy again and Ginia was comfortable with herself. There was nothing that was stopping them from being together! And the way they embraced, God, do I love the way they embrace! It’s just so different and yet so intimate! But before we even got to the embrace, the moment when Ginia saw Amelia and she had to look three times as if she was not believing her eyes, as if she did not know what to do in that moment, it’s just pure poetry without any spoken words and I frikkin love it!

A happy ending!

That is something I wasn’t expecting and even to this day still question my luck!

I have to say, as my first taste of Italian gay cine, I am very happy with what I got! The movie itself is so beautiful, it reminded me of THE GLASS ROOM aka THE AFFAIR! The only thing I noticed was that there was a lot of motion blur, which came off as incompetent, but I managed to grab the correct focused frames, so I forgive!

Rest be assured, there will be a video of these two, when I get back to making videos, eventually!

Ja