An Autumn Summer

Writer-director Jared Isaac’s An Autumn Summer is a youthful summer romance set in the tip of the Michigan mitten where both summer and winter last forever. High school sweethearts Cody (Lukita Maxwell) and Kevin (Mark McKenna), along with their two best friends, wind down a final idyllic summer together near Traverse City before college inevitably pulls them apart. They don’t know what life looks like after summer yet beyond the assurance of change.

The most idyllic part of their summer has nothing to do with the scenery or their young love. There is no real conflict in An Autumn Summer. Everyone gets along perfectly and the only problem is they will miss each other too much because of how perfectly everyone gets along. This is a significant departure from the end-of-summer love subgenre where the drama intensifies with the fading of the season’s heat. In that way, it captures the aching of the twilight of a first love. Cody and Kevin both realize they can’t live in their fairytale forever. 

This is the only maturing that happens, though. These teenagers come from affluent families sheltered from real-world problems. They enjoy annual summer vacations and own boats. Staple features of problematic 2010s childhoods — toxic masculinity, homophobia, deep-seated racism, misogyny and bullying — have no presence in An Autumn Summer. That’s not to say one should wish malice on these innocent children. It’s just an altogether unfamiliar experience for this Midwestern-reared writer.

With one notable exception, the actors frequently call attention to themselves as, well, acting. The issue across the board, while differing in its symptoms, is a propensity to overact: exaggerated animations, forced movements and unnatural vocal variety. The script doesn’t do much to help the actors, either. These are people who actually flirt by using the line “Come here often?” and unironically mutter things like “Am I not the chillest?” That’s not to say the screenplay or cast are fully devoid of merit. They show enough potential to make this even more frustrating. One scene, a very quirky and specific conversation about dinosaurs and mushrooms, demonstrates Isaac’s potential as a writer, as well as McKenna’s and others’ abilities as actors, for example. It’s one of the only times where the topics of conversation don’t feel algorithmically generic. 

Maxwell stands out from the rest of the cast.

Continue reading at Midwest Film Journal.