Summer Lovers (1982, Randal Kleiser)

Now, here's a Blu-ray I never thought I'd see.  Twilight Time, through their license agreement with MGM, have given Randal Kleiser's Summer Lovers its first-ever widescreen home media release. But, where most other companies, including MGM, likely would have issued the film in barebones fashion, Twilight Time have gone the extra mile and included a candid feature-length audio commentary by Kleiser, an isolated score / fx track, two theatrical trailers (regular and red band), a documentary on late composer Basil Poledouris, screen tests (featuring Patrick Swayze, Hart Bochner, and Valerie Quennessen!), a booklet with Julie Kirgo essay, and the mythical--to Summer Lovers fans like myself, anyway--The Making of Summer Lovers, a vintage featurette shot on location in late 1981 and seemingly unseen since the film's original release in 1982.

I've written about the film here previously, but to recap briefly: the plot centers on Michael and Cathy (Peter Gallagher and Daryl Hannah), a young American couple vacationing on Santorini, who enter into a summer-long menage a trois with Lina (Valerie Quennessen), a French archaeologist working on the island. After having viewed the film for the umpteenth time via the new Blu-ray, I maintain that the film would have benefited from portraying a sexual relationship between the two women (Daryl Hannah and Valerie Quennessen) and concluding on a more subdued, realistic note than does the shiny, happy Pointer Sisters-fueled ending we currently have.  All that said, the film remains a personal favorite of mine, an escapist treat that never ceases to raise my spirits, and which inspired me to travel to the Greek Isles on more than one occasion, including Santorini, the film's main location. Like a lot of films from its era, it has an earnestness and lack of irony that I love, but many will read today as "cheesy."

Kleiser was inspired by then-recent French art cinema to go where few, if any, mainstream American films had gone before and depict a polyamorous relationship in an honest and realistic manner, along with the casual, non-sexual nudity that was usually anathema to Hollywood. But, he had to balance this narrative goal with the obligations of a major summer release.  So, it is a light and bubbly film in most respects, with the kind of infectious, joyous pop music score and montage sequences expected from the filmmaker behind Grease.  There are, however, undercurrents of sadness and mystery, mostly coming from the character of Lina and Valerie Quennessen's nuanced and moving portrayal of her.  That this would be the luminous Quennessen's final film performance and that she would tragically die in an auto accident several years later grants the film an extra, unintended layer of melancholy.  And, in spite of the film coming out in the Reagan years, it has a refreshingly non-conformist, open-minded spirit that feels like a holdover from the previous decade.

As the years have gone by, the film has increasingly become valued as a cinematic time capsule of pre-AIDs attitudes towards sex and "open" relationships.  This notion is given extra resonance on Kleiser's commentary track when he memorializes numerous talented crew members who were felled by AIDS in the next several years after Summer Lovers' completion.  

The aforementioned Quennessen (those eyes!) is the highlight for me and numerous other viewers who have made this film a cult item over the ensuing years.  That said, the unfairly maligned Daryl Hannah brings an integral charm, sweetness, and sense of curiosity to the film, qualities seemingly underrated by most people not named Ron Howard.  The film is at its best when Hannah and Quennessen are in sync, either teasing Peter Gallagher or speaking about him with genuine affection. Gallagher was also treated pretty unkindly by critics when the film was released, but I think his sense of comic timing and willingness to poke fun at himself (not to mention going full frontal) is woefully under-appreciated.  The physical comedy of his first strip down on the beach cracks me up every time I watch it and it was interesting to hear from Kleiser that these beats were improvised by the actor on set rather than being in the script.

As a soundtrack aficionado, I can't not mention the music here, from the impossibly upbeat title track by Michael Sembello to the possibly even more upbeat "I'm So Excited" to Tina Turner's great cover of "Johnny and Mary" to Lime's classic "Your Love." Basil Poledouris' all electronic--Vangelis and Jean-Michel Jarre-inspired?--New Age score, adds immeasurably to the film's mood in its more introspective moments, none more so than when Gallagher first lays eyes on Quennessen.  As with most Twilight Time releases, all the music is here on an isolated track, although in this case it's a music and effects track, unfortunately.  I can only guess that with several changes in the film's ownership (Filmways to Orion to MGM) over the years, Poledouris' score tapes have gone missing.   

With the new HD master used as the source for Twilight Time's Blu-ray, it's safe to say Summer Lovers hasn't looked better since its original theatrical release...and the film itself has gotten better with age.  It's not an entirely successful mashup of beach party movie and Rohmer (I don't know that any movie could be), but its heart is in the right place and it remains unique in its attempts to bring a "free and open" European flavor, as well as the complications of a polyamorous relationship, to the summer popcorn movie season.

The 1981 Filmways logo (one of my favorite studio logos) that preceded Summer Lovers when first released in 1982.  Unfortunately, it has not been restored to the new Blu-ray, which instead begins with an Orion logo:

Filmways Pictures

Formed when Filmways, Inc. purchased Samuel Z. Arkoff's American International Pictures (AIP) in 1979, Filmways Pictures released several films of note before it went into bankruptcy and was absorbed by Orion Pictures in 1981.



This rare first Filmways logo comes from the beginning of the Dressed to Kill letterboxed laserdisc issued in '93 by Image.  The DVD and Blu-ray replace this logo with MGM and Orion logos.  Dressed to Kill was probably the company's most successful film in terms of box office and critical reception, in addition to the controversy and word-of-mouth that it generated.  De Palma's expensive follow-up, Blow Out, while recognized now as one of his finest achievements, was a big money loser in the Summer of '81 and a crushing blow to the company's survival.  Based on the unscientific IMDb numbers, Death Wish II, released in early '82, was likely the company's only other box office winner.  Other worthwhile titles in the Filmways stable included Arthur Penn's Four Friends, the cult classic post-punk concert film Urgh! A Music War, The First Deadly Sin (Sinatra's last starring role), and the final film to go out with the Filmways imprimatur, Summer Lovers.  Most of these films appear on DVD with newer Orion logos rather than the Filmways logos that were originally attached.

I have not seen the above logo on a DVD or Blu-ray, but if someone has I would be interested to hear about it.

 

Judging by this industry ad, things could have been much different for film history, if Filmways had stayed afloat a little longer.

TV Spot(s) Not on the DVD: Summer Lovers (1982, Randal Kleiser)

These apparently aired on the then-nascent MTV in Summer '82.  I can't think of other TV spots that utilized actors and incorporated new scenes as this one does.  Can you?  I do, of course, recall the many TV spots that interviewed moviegoers as they exited a film or waited on line for tickets.

Going Native

I will aspire to do as Mr. Kleiser and friends did, while I'm there. See you again in a couple weeks...

"Making love to you is like riding a horse."

My most guilty pleasure, certainly of the '80s thanks, in part, to lines of dialogue like the one I quoted for the title of this post. This "novelisation" was published in Australia by Horwitz Grahame Books and "adapted from the movie" by Carl Ruhen. Like a lot of movie tie-ins, this one differs in interesting ways from the film, most notably with regards to the conclusion, which is melancholy and introspective in contrast to the joyously upbeat ending of the film. I wonder if it came from an earlier version of Randal Kleiser's script or if Mr. Ruhen took some poetic license.

Sadly, flood damaged:

"Now, that's a scream!"

Sequence of frames for my favorite '70s /'80s-era studio logo. This one looks like it should open a Hong Kong action extravaganza. I first saw it on my laserdisc of Blow Out. It was accompanied by the sound of a heartbeat, part of Jack Terry's (John Travolta) sound mix of the film-within-a-film Coed Frenzy. I was disappointed when the DVD of Blow Out replaced this logo with a latter-era Orion logo. Filmways and Orion merged in 1983. As far as I can tell, Summer Lovers was the last Filmways feature film and the last one to use this logo. It was present in a 16mm print that I ran, but it is not on the DVD or recent cable broadcasts of the film. These captures come from the MGM-HD broadcast of Blow Out. You can read the history of Filmways here.

"Walk on the edge of a knife, the heart is the hunter..."

I've had several requests to re-up the (nearly) complete Summer Lovers soundtrack I cobbled together from various sources. Your requests have been heard.

The lovely Valerie Quennessen (as seen in French Postcards)

"One Blonde. One Brunette. One Summer They'll Never Forget."

Summer Lovers (1982, Randal Kleiser)

After making the highly profitable Grease and The Blue Lagoon, director Randal Kleiser was in a position to make his most personal project, the self-penned Summer Lovers, said to be inspired by his frequent visits to the gorgeous Greek Isles, particularly Santorini.  It's hard to blame Kleiser for choosing to make a film in Greece and filling the screen with lots of beautiful, unclothed bodies.  Seems like the perfectly sensible thing to do if a studio's offering you the money to do it.  Unfortunately, something went wrong. Released in the summer of 1982, Summer Lovers sank like a stone at the box office and was savaged by critics.  

It is admittedly a very a lightweight project,  but, for my money, Summer Lovers is a very entertaining and pleasant 99 minutes of pure escapism.  I certainly don't think Kleiser was aspiring for greatness, but what he does here, he does very well.  At the same time, I would have liked to have seen Kleiser take more chances with several aspects of the narrative.  He presents us with three very attractive and likeable lead actors (Peter Gallagher, Daryl Hannah, and Valerie Quennessen) and puts them in very attractive locations.  The minimal plot revolves around young American couple Cathy (Hannah) and Michael (Gallagher) on holiday on Santorini who become romantically involved with visiting French archaeologist Lina (Quennessen) and share a highly satisfying summer as friends, lovers, and companions.  

All of it is done in a very non-threatening way--the women are never shown making love with each other--and it is all very skillfully shot, and edited, and scored.  The late, great Basil Poledouris (Conan) provides an uncharacteristically electronic, new age-style score not unlike something Vangelis would compose and the appropriately upbeat soundtrack includes the likes of Michael Sembello (giving us a humorously on-the-nose '80s theme song), Depeche Mode, Elton John, Heaven 17, Tina Turner, the Pointer Sisters, Plastic Bertrand, Nona Hendryx, Chicago, Stephen Bishop, Lime, Prince, and others.

The film has an interesting structure as it first prominently features Gallagher as he rather inexplicably tires of Hannah and falls under the spell of the more mysterious Quennessen. After Hannah learns of the affair, she surprises herself and her man and goes to the other woman. The women bond and now it is Gallagher who is threatened. This is where the movie is at its most satisfying but while Kleiser has Cathy and Lina become much closer than we see either of them get to Michael, he does not allow them to go further, at least onscreen. This is unfortunate because the Cathy/Lina relationship has the potential to be much more interesting.  Instead Kleiser moves the film into the realm of male fantasy in which Gallagher becomes the roommate and lover of two beautiful and intelligent women.  

In an interesting 1982 interview with Stephen Brunt of Canada's Globe and Mail, Kleiser says that he was inspired by French comedies when conceiving the film. "I like the kind of romantic comedies that they make in France that are about relationships that change."  To be fair to Kleiser regarding the underexplored elements of the relationships, he was hamstrung by studio restrictions.  According to the same interview, Kleiser made the film at the smaller Filmways studio because the other studios were afraid of the racier elements of the story and Filmways was the only one willing to allow Kleiser to have all three principals living under the same roof. In the Los Angeles Times, Kleiser told Dale Pollock that he purposely did not go further with the portrayal of the women's relationship.  "In order to get across this spirit of freedom, I had to be careful not to turn off a large segment of the audience that couldn't cope with that aspect."

Amazingly, Gallagher has mostly been derogatory towards this film over the years, although he has softened his stance more recently. Look at the promotional photos that adorn this article and watch the film and I think you will agree that Gallagher was smart to take on the role and equally wise to stop complaining about it.  There was an amusing brief blurb in either Entertainment Weekly or Premiere about ten years ago that mentioned that Gallagher had visited Santorini for the first time since he shot Summer Lovers.  He apparently was flanked by his wife and mother-in-law, leading locals to observe not only that he had returned to the isles, but that he once again had the companionship of two women.  I wish I still had that clipping because I cannot recall the exact details. 

One of several films to explore same-sex relationships in 1982--Personal Best, Making Love, and Lianna were the others--Summer Lovers is particularly perplexing in its hesitancy to take the next step if only because director Kleiser is the only openly gay director of the four films.  I realize I am simplifying the issue quite a bit, but I find the irony interesting nonetheless.  As much as I adore Quennessen, and her character, Lina, I still find myself puzzled by Michael's disinterest in Hannah's Cathy. Hannah has her share of detractors, but I think she is especially good at projecting a genuine sweetness and endearing naivete.  Here, she is at her most charming and beautiful (Janet Maslin thought "bland") and she adores Michael, yet he runs off at the first chance.  

As for Quennessen, she probably comes off the best of the three in terms of performance, in large part, because her character is exotic and has the most mystery about her, but I think she is even more beguiling in the earlier French Postcards.  In her review of that film, Maslin calls Quennessen an "irresistible French gamine" and I agree with her. 

Unfortunately, the young actress retired prematurely from the screen after Summer Lovers to concentrate on raising a family.  She was rather revealing during a press junket in New York for the film, which was quoted in a Globe and Mail article at the time.  "When they called for the movie, I had to stop all what I'm doing.  These Americans, they expect you drop everything for a movie.  In France, we never get involved in the actor myth.  We try to get close to the actors we work with.  You can't get this close to American actors.  They get so wrapped up in what they do that they ask themselves afterwards, 'Who am I?'"  Her life would end tragically in a car accident in 1989, making her few film performances even more poignant.  

In a smaller role, is the fine Dutch actor Hans van Tongeren.  He plays Jan, the only person who seriously vies for either Cathy or Lina.  Lina stays with him for a time, but is eventually drawn back to Cathy and Michael. Apparently, van Tongeren was vacationing on Santorini at the time of filming and was spotted by Hannah.  She recognized the young actor from his work in Paul Verhoeven's Spetters, for which he had deservedly received much acclaim and persuaded him to join the production.  I'm not sure if the character was written for him or if the part was ready and waiting to be filled.  In any event, van Tongeren's appearance is bittersweet because the role is intriguing, but rather small, and because this would be one of his final roles.  Sadly, van Tongeren committed suicide in August of 1982 just around the time that Summer Lovers opened.  He is not able to make so much of an impression here, but in Spetters it is apparent that he was a major talent.  Verhoeven who is clearly haunted by his death speaks very highly of van Tongeren in this biography.  According the Dutch Wikipedia entry for van Tongeren, the Dutch media reported that he had spent time in psychiatric wards and was perhaps too close to some of his roles, something that is particularly resonant when one thinks of his character in Spetters.

In filming on the islands of Santorini, Delos, Mykonos, and Crete without really acknowledging all the island hopping within the film's narrative, Kleiser creates something of a Greek mega-island.  Visitors to the islands will find the ease with which Cathy and Michael see all the sites that they do, quite impossible to duplicate in reality.  This does not deter, however, from the great compliment Kleiser and his crew pay to the islands by virtue of the film's sumptuous cinematography.  This is one of the best cinematic advertisements for tourism that I have ever seen--I'm living proof as are many of the members of this forum.

In making the film on the islands, Kleiser sought to portray the easygoing, open lifestyle he witnessed there, especially amongst the many young people who congregated there in the summer and camped out on the beaches.  In a New York Times article that appeared as the film was opening he spoke of the magic of the islands, "a mecca for young people from all over the world.  You see cultures exchanging information, love affairs happening.  And the Greeks are so honest. Campers left their backpacks in the town square and went off to the beach for the day. When they came back at night, nothing had been stolen."  In the film, one gets hints at the sense of possibility and discovery on the islands and the ephemeral nature of it all, but it's not fully explored.  In the interview with the Globe and Mail, Kleiser mentions doing "research screenings" with many young people in the audience and determining "whether they were with it or not."  By the end of these screenings, the film had been cut from 130 minutes to 99.  I wonder if some of the lost material would have supplied the film with more grist or nuance with regards to the aforementioned special qualities of the islands.

At one point, Kleiser told Pollock the script was to include five separate plots to be joined in the manner that his good friend George Lucas had done in American Graffiti. Ultimately, however, Kleiser was "fascinated" by "the couple's sexual and emotional liberation" and shifted entirely to their story.  Before writing the script, Kleiser screened "numerous French films to capture the elusive tone of subtle sexuality."  The idea of a multi-narrative script is intriguing, but rather than adding more characters, I think the film would probably be best served if Kleiser had turned his focus entirely onto one young character--male or female--and followed him or her from the moment of arrival on the island to departure, showing us the relationships and discoveries as they happened.

While Kleiser does not adequately explore the potential lesbian romance, he does not skimp on the onscreen nudity by the principals or the countless extras seen on nude beaches.  If this movie were made today, I think it would be more daring in its approach to the relationship of the women, however I have a hard time believing it would contain nearly the amount of nudity that the film does.  This points to the odd "progression" that Hollywood films have made over the years. They have become overwhelmingly prudish with regards to sex and nudity, but upped the quotient on toilet humor and violence. By the same token, mainstream film and television have become much more tolerant of gay content and characters.  Although, Summer Lovers disappoints in this regard, it must be praised for its non-exploitative, rather European treatment of onscreen nudity--much of it is of the casual, everyday variety, which is very refreshing to see in light of the current dearth of such content in mainstream cinema.  

I have briefly mentioned the music, which I must once again praise. The film was said to be highly marketed on the then nascent MTV and it must be said that this is appropriate as Kleiser's soundtrack is very adeptly compiled collection of then-current synth pop and dance tunes--unfortunately much of the music, including the majority of Poledouris' fine score, is underrepresented on the official, now out-of-print Warner Bros. LP.  For a time it was the only way to way to obtain Depeche Mode's "Just Can't Get Enough" on U.S. shores, an indication that the soundtrack was a bit more prescient and cutting edge than it appears now.  

Poledouris' rather brief, hauntingly beautiful score, though, really raises the film to a higher level in several cases.  I think, particularly of the moments when Michael first sees Lina at the beach at Matala and then when they later go swimming together to the cave.  These scenes are without dialogue, containing only Poledouris' lovely "Sea Cave" cue, enchanting locales, and longing glances in close-up.  The film may have its share of fluff and shallowness, but these brief moments, for me, are what I think French critics Jean Epstein and Louis Delluc meant by photogenie.  I have no doubt this interpretation has something to do with my infatuation with Ms. Quennessen.

 

I must credit this very attractive fan site for most of the Summer Lovers visuals seen in this article.

UPDATE:

Summer Lovers, Complete Songs and Score (Ripped from DVD).

Some alternate versions of songs appear at the end of the album. I've given names to the score tracks aside from the 2 that appeared on the original album ("Sea Cave," "Search for Lina"). Cobbled together from a variety of sources, the Basil Poledouris score and otherwise unavailable songs are ripped from DVD and have not been further manipulated (dialogue and sound f/x included).  The quality is rough on a few of these tracks, but keep in mind that a few only appeared as B-sides and/or on the original soundtrack album. I did not do the original vinyl rips so thanks to those who did the legwork. I've upgraded most of the tracks that are available in other places: 

http://www.sendspace.com/file/47mqwp