Cock your hat, angles are attitudes.

Summer In February
Christopher Menaul 2013 UK
Starring: Emily Browning, Dominic Cooper, Dan Stevens, Hattie Morahan, Shaun Dingwall

Films about artists don't seem to be terribly popular in mainstream cinema. There are of course some wonderful works under this banner, among them Derek Jacobi's excellent turn as Francis Bacon in Love Is The Devil and Michel Piccoli's fictional Frenhofer in Jacques Rivette's portrait of the exhaustive nature of art, La Belle Noiseuse, but unfortunately Summer In February isn't one of them, jettisoning as it does any kind of exploration of Alfred Munnings' work in favour of a hackneyed love triangle between Munnings, his tragic wife Florence Carter-Wood and his friend Gilbert Evans. This certainly isn't a flattering portrayal either, with Dominic Cooper's Munnings petulant and plain-speaking, brutish and eager to humiliate and carrying the distinct air of a man who's regularly been told that he's a genius. At times he appears to be little more than a drunk, at others he recites poetry and dirty limericks from memory but at no point does he elicit any kind of sympathy or even many relatable traits. Wood meanwhile (ably played by Emily Browning) has run away from her domineering father and has been suffering an 'illness' mentioned only in whispers. She has a twitchiness about her that implies something barely hidden under the surface but we never find out what it is, and after the first half hour it's never mentioned again. Judging by later plot developments it could be a tendency towards depression or even a history of attempting suicide but the film gives us few actual clues. Similarly Evans is shown early on to be a figure loved by both Wood and Munnings and Cooper does well throwing forlorn glances that would suggest a undercurrent of non-sexual male love between the two but again it's a potentially interesting development that's never explored beyond this. As Evans Dan Stevens doesn't do that well, aiming for moody upper-class discretion but never really getting past the fact that his lumbering frame contains very little talent. Honestly, the most striking thing about his performance is that he's quite the kisser but regrettably that talent can't be stretched to fill a entire feature film. The script isn't much help either as, even though it makes a good fist of the early flirtatious banter between the leads, much of the dialogue is pretty poor and the central romantic scene is absolutely atrocious. A later scene where Cooper has to play the abusive husband meanwhile is clichéd beyond belief, even down to the commonplace menacing undoing of his belt. It's not all bad though, the film is beautiful to look at even if veteran director Christopher Menaul throws in a couple of creative camera shots, appearing not to realise that they're pretty ill-fitting next to the limpid, traditional nature of the rest of the film. Overall it comes across as a bit of an exercise in futility that doesn't often seem all that credible despite being based on a true story. It's certainly not a piece that will teach you much about Munnings' as an artist, in fact you'd undoubtedly be better off going to a gallery or buying a book.