Film reviews: Love Me Tender | The Summer Book | Nimrods: A Green Day Comedy

Love Me Tender (15) ★★★★

The Summer Book (PG) ★★★

Nimrods: A Green Day Comedy (15) ★★

French filmmaker Anna Cazenave Cambet’s custody battle drama Love Me Tender explores the dark side of decoupling as a writer finds her initially amicable separation from her husband complicated by his increasingly insidious efforts to limit access to their son. For lawyer-turned-author Clémence (Vicky Krieps), the sea-change in attitude is directly attributable to one thing: her revelation that she’s started dating women — apparently a step too far in the journey of self-discovery she’s been on since parting ways with husband Laurent (Antoine Reinartz). Though initially Laurent takes the news with good grace, the next time Clémence arrives at her former apartment to pick up their eight-year-old son, Paul (Viggo Ferreira-Redier), the kid refuses to see her, establishing a pattern of behaviour that escalates as Laurent proceeds to weaponise her lifestyle against her.

The films stays with Clémence throughout and we watch, enraged, as she’s suddenly forced to navigate a specious legal challenge to her parental rights simply for being unapologetic about pursuing a more sensual and artistic life. It’s a choice that subtly exposes the pettiness and cruelty of Laurent’s actions. The delusional threat to his ego and masculinity that Clémence apparently poses has very real emotional consequences for both Clémence and Paul, whose confusion is palpable during the limited moments of supervised interaction he gets with his mum over the ensuing 18 months of legal wrangles.

Here the film works almost like a corrective to landmark divorce drama Kramer vs Kramer, providing a detailed portrait of a woman trying to be a both herself and a mother in a society that even now still expects women to let themselves be completely subsumed by the latter role. Krieps, who’s in every frame, shows the toll this takes and with great intelligence and sympathy demonstrates the fortitude required to reject prescribed social norms. Her symbolic head-shaving in the final act provides Love Me Tender with a particularly striking image of defiance as Clémence tries to imagine how her relationship with her son might evolve.

Based on the beloved 1972 novel by Tove Jansson, best known as the creator of The Moomins, The Summer Book finds Glenn Close on playfully shrewd form as a wise old grandmother helping her recently widowed son and granddaughter work through their collective grief on an idyllic island in the Gulf of Finland.

The family has a sentimental attachment to this landscape — they have a cabin on it and have spent many years summering there — and it’s clear early on that Close’s character understands the healing power its natural beauty might offer her withdrawn son (played by Anders Danielson Lie) and headstrong granddaughter Sophie (Emily Matthews), who thinks her father hasn’t been able to love her since her mother died.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the film leans heavily on its locations and is at its most affecting in the scenes featuring Close’s character communing with the surroundings. But while intentionally gentle in approach, dramatically it can feel a little underpowered. The dialogue is often twee, Danielson Lie has too little to do and a storm-bound scene of emotional catharsis is as clunky as it sounds. Nevertheless, Close makes it watchable, and she deserves credit for trying to get under her character’s skin, not just turn in a twinkly movie-star version of a lovable grandma.

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Named for Green Day’s 1996 album of the same name, Nimrods uses the multi-million-selling, MAGA-baiting (and before that Bush-baiting) punk band’s music and early gigs as inspiration for a disappointingly limp coming-of-age comedy about a trio of high school misfits who travel from Kansas to LA in the mistaken belief their band is going to open for the alt-rock elder statesmen.

Though Green Day’s hits — including American Idiot and Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) — feature heavily on the soundtrack and final concert sequence, the film taps more into a kind of rose-tinted nostalgia for the their earnest, DIY approach to making music and touring. There’s certainly scant evidence of the band’s spikier satirical and political leanings in the cobbled-together story of a mildly rebellious high schooler called Tommy (Black Phone’s Mason Thames) whose older brother Wayne (Keen Ruffalo) dupes him and his best friend Fred (Kylr Coffman) into believing that Green Day like their band’s demo enough to offer them a support slot at their upcoming New Year’s Eve show.

With only three days to get to LA, these credulous cretins promptly steal Wayne’s car and travel cross-country with their nerdy drummer Chad (Ryan Foust), having run-ins along the way with all manner of misfits. It’s a film about finding your tribe and following your dreams, executed with a gooey sweetness that’s a world away not just from the reality of present day America, but also the sharp, hormonally charged comedy of teen movies like Superbad and Book Smart. File under missed opportunity.

Love Me Tender and The Summer Book are in cinemas from 7 August; Nimrods: A Green Day Comedy is in cinemas from 11 August

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