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'A Summer Story'
By Rita Kempley
Washington Post Staff Writer
September 02, 1988
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"A Summer Story" is scenery: cows in the meadow, maids in the hay, and upper-class Englishmen on holiday. Based on one of John Galsworthy's west country odes, this pastoral pictorial proves the Devon cream of romantic cliche's. It's a real change of pace for director Piers Haggard, who is best known for the blackly comic TV series "Pennies From Heaven."A middle-aged man looks over a wooden fence, thinking back to 1901, when England was still an empire and he a fair-haired youth walking on the heathery moors. The flashback reveals a country girl, fresh as hens' eggs and ripe as cherries, as she performs romanticized chores. Now flashback-ensconced, we see that fate will bring them together, and intuit that class will set them apart. One of the abiding conflicts of Anglo art is about to be explored yet again: the feasibility of the upstairs-downstairs relationship. James Wilby, Bambi-faced hero of "Maurice," stars as a genteel Londoner named Frank whose sojourn with an attractive farm family becomes an idyll of love. While recovering from a twisted ankle, Frank is besotted with Megan (Imogen Stubbs) of the ash-blond hair and the stormy blue eyes. They consummate their longing on a pile of freshly shorn sheepskins, tenderly exploring their supple white bodies in the customary fashion. The camera just about swoons. Their true love/pure love is tested when Frank travels to the fashionable seaside resort of Torquay. In this charming new location, he bumps into an old school chum and his fetching sister, a Tennyson lover like himself. Though he has vowed to return to Megan, a series of minor inconveniences -- the bank won't cash his check, he misses his train -- detains him among his peers. And while Megan pines Heathcliff-like, the wind luffing her locks, Frank flirts with destiny in the form of the sister. Is it to be true love or a good match? Which will the winsome, wimplike Frank choose? Three guesses and 18 years later, the flashback fades and we find the middle-aged Frank at the fence (which he dare not cross again). Pipe-smoking thoughtfully and gazing out over the green green hills, he asks the rhetorical question: "Why have I come here?" Could it be to revisit his youth, to heal an old hurt, or simply to admire the scenery?
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