A Real Summer

This is an exquisite 45 minute film written and directed by the amazing Stephen Poliakoff. It is a prequel to the longer film CAPTURING MARY (2007, see my review). The film is so bizarre and original that it nearly defies description. But then Poliakoff himself defies description, which is why one is continually bedazzled by anything he does. In fact, the brain-dead nonentities who run the BBC these days have one and only one redeeming quality: for reasons doubtless unknown to them, and ordained by Fate, those morons allow Poliakoff to get away with anything. And he does, by which I mean he succeeds in weaving enchanting webs of mystery and longing over and over and over again. This film has only one actress, who plays two characters (never seen in the same scene, but only talking on the phone with each other), a young actress named Ruth Wilson, of astonishing brilliance. I would go so far as to say that she has possibly delivered the most amazing dramatic monologues in television drama history, twice over (for she plays both characters, each of whom delivers monologues, and as one also mimics and imitates the other, you could even say thrice over). Why on earth Ruth Wilson is not a super-star by now I cannot imagine, as her talent is stratospheric. She seems to have languished in television series not worthy of her. Is that because people are afraid of her? They should be. Of course she appears again in CAPTURING MARY, but apart from that, her threat to eclipse all other actresses has been safely contained by not giving her the parts which would allow her to do it. She appears to be the victim of a conspiracy not to recognise her. But Poliakoff, clever chap that he is, saw what others turn away from. No averted gazes for Poliakoff, he looks directly at things. And in this film, Ruth Wilson suitably looks directly at camera for most of the time. And she has a silent and immovable Greek chorus, three meditative dalmatian dogs, who sit and look at her as if they are listening to her monologues intently. To say this film is eccentric is to understate the case. There simply has never been anything else like it. Poliakoff is in his own multiple universes, all dictated by his own personal solutions to the quantum mechanical wave equations. One cannot count the dimensions of the private spaces he inhabits, as they extend endlessly, none obeying the laws of mathematics at all. This film incorporates marvellous old black and white footage of 1958, the year in which it takes place, all typical of Poliakoff's continual evocations of lost eras, moods, and modulations, greatly aided by the marvellous music which accompanies most of his excursions into Proustian 'lost time', including this one. This gem of a film is hidden away as a guilty little secret under Special Features (Extras) of the DVD of CAPTURING MARY, however anyone interested in the most spell-binding of monologues should buy the DVD just for this. It is not available in any other way. You really have to see it to believe it, and even then you won't. The BBC cowards don't even list the title of this film on the cover of the DVD, you have to read the small print on the back, which few people ever do. Why cover up the existence of this cinematic gem and try to pretend it was never made? What are they afraid of? That they might be accused of producing something so subtle that the chatterati cannot cope with it?

Two thirds of the way through the Poliakoff triptych based on the life and times of a large London house, it's possible that this, the shortest piece, an afterthought, may be the most memorable.

A Real Summer starts like one of those Alan Bennett Talking Heads monologues actresses used consider murdering each other to get into. Then, like Poliakoff's unspoken contention that the world changed in 1958, the outside world intrudes, and something happens which re-colours and changes everything that went before The tone is initially elegiac, confiding, reassuring, then disturbing, before descending into almost tragic foreboding.

Anyone who still doubts Ruth Wilson's talent may feel the odd twinge in the first 10 minutes. The odd gesture and accent is slightly uncertain at first, possibly intentionally, there's even a script goof left in, but after the last 10 minutes you won't remember those. You won't even remember Poliakoff's name or Joe's Palace.

All you'll be worried about is what you can see Wilson in next and how long you'll have to wait.

I don't feel I can say more without spoiling the treat. Poliakoff has given her the ideal showcase for her enormous talent here and she rises to the challenge. Memorably.

It's a beautiful piece. For someone whose not used to watching long monologues on screen it was a bit hard to grasp the nature of the piece... initially. But once Felicity/Geraldine was introduced and the story gained momentum, it really did become captivating.

Ruth manages to hold your attention throughout the monologue and eventual duologue without any dramatic outbursts, it's all within the subtleties in the manner in which she speaks. Just beautiful.

The basic tone of the television monologue, as perfected by Alan Bennett, is well known: pathos (why would the character be speaking to you if they had friends of their own?) and the course of its narrative also: the painful journey to (partial) self-awareness, with a real truth hinted at between the lines. To his credit, Stepehen Polliakoff has ventured into this form without respecting these conventions (I like Bennett, but following a successful season of his monologues, the BBC once commissioned a series of further monologues from other writers, most of which felt dangerously close to parodies of their predecessors). But whether this is a successful experiment is less clear: we get an incomplete story, not a full one, and (in the absence of pathos), the character delivering the monologue comes across as insufferably smug.

In fact, only the first half of 'A Real Summer' is truly monologue: the second half is a dialogue, conducted over the telephone, between two characters (one the deliverer of the earlier monologue) both played by Ruth Wilson. Here there's another problem: that the character of working-class stock presents herself in an almost more aristocratic fashion than her débutante friend; she talks of culture clash, but it's hard for us to see it. In fact, Polliakoff wrote this piece as a companion to another drama that has not been shown yet; and as a teaser for that, it makes some sense, there's certainly more life in it than there was in the dreary 'Joe's Palace', which was also linked in with the same story (although at this point, the connection is still unclear). On its own, it feels more like half a drama, intriguing but lacking in more than just the size of its cast.