Summertime: Sundance Review

Synopsis

From Sundance Institute:

Over the course of a hot summer day in Los Angeles, the lives of 25 young Angelinos intersect. A skating guitarist, a tagger, two wannabe rappers, an exasperated fast-food worker, a limo driver—they all weave in and out of each other’s stories. Through poetry they express life, love, heartache, family, home, and fear. One of them just wants to find someplace that still serves good cheeseburgers. 

Review

Director Carlos Lopez-Estrada has begun to cement his directorial style into the minds of the people with Summertime. This film is tonally similar to Blindspotting (2018, dir. Carlos Lopez-Estrada) with an almost documentary style vibe. I've figured out that Lopez-Estrada does this to give the stories an element of fact. It presents the stories as the truth, whether that be about its message, with Blindspotting, or what it is exploring, with this film. This film is unapolagetically in love with Los Angeles, the city that birthed the poets in this film. Speaking of poetry, the poetry in this film is excellent. Two poems that stayed with me were the poem delivered on the bus, a frank expression of sexuality, and a poem delivered at the end, an effort to say "I've let you go." Just beautiful. Now, I was unsure of whether the poems would be introduced as poems or integrated into the story. You see some of both in the film, but they lean more into an integration of the poems, which works to the film's benefit. There is one instance where it seems kind of hammered in, which made me worried, but it eventually overcame that and it works so well after that. Technically, the film is very well done, particularly the cinematography. And one more thing, there is a poem that incorporates some choreography that is simply beautiful.