EVACUATION STATION

SUMMERLAND Myth and motherhood combine for Jessica Swale’s directorial debut.

UIsually BAFTA is all about handing out gongs. In the case of Jessica Swale, the British Academy of Film and Television awarded her a bursary – eight years ago – to develop her first screenplay. The result is Summerland, a WW2 evacuee drama starring her good friends Gemma Arterton and Gugu Mbatha-Raw, who both starred in productions of Swale’s 2015 Olivier-nominated play Nell Gwynn.

Back when she was formulating Summerland, on the proviso that it was a brand-new idea, Swale had to start from scratch. “I wrote down that I’m interested in underdogs and folklore and imagination and a child’s perspective,” she says. Cunningly, she’s integrated all these themes into a story set on England’s south coast that stars Arterton as Alice, a folklore historian who, in 1940, is something of an outsider in her village.

“I wanted to write a heroine who was not exciting because she was glamorous or because she was vulnerable and delicate and damaged, and therefore was sexy. But a person who is genuinely isolated, because they’ve had to deal with tragedy in the past, so they’ve put all their energy into their work – an intelligent woman where it wasn’t all about her having a super-brain that changed the world.”

Also single and childless, it makes Alice a highly unusual female lead. “People

assume that because it’s 1940 and she lives on her own and she’s a woman that therefore there is something really wrong with her – a bit like they do now!” laughs Swale. But then things change when Alice is forced to look after Frank (Lucas Bond), a young evacuee whose very presence upsets her withdrawn existence.

With the story flipping back to an earlier timeline featuring Mbatha-Raw’s “whirlwind” character – “who knocks Alice’s life in a different direction” – Swale needed an actress capable of switching ages. “This is a woman who goes on an enormous emotional journey; because we see her in the past and present it’s almost like playing two different characters.” Thank heavens for Gemma Arterton then. “She’s so capable of playing anything you throw at her.” JM

ETA | 24 JULY / SUMMERLAND OPENS NEXT MONTH.