SOME MOTHERS DO ‘AVE ‘EM...
DAYS OF THE BAGNOLD SUMMER (12) ★★★ ★★ Inbetweener Simon Bird’s feature directorial debut is an entertaining tale of a despairing single parent and her angst-ridden teenage son
ADAPTED from Joff Winterhart’s graphic novel, Days of the Bagnold Summer is a fitfully entertaining coming of (middle) age comedy, which marks the feature directorial debut of Inbetweeners star Simon Bird.
Working from an undernourished script by his wife Lisa Owens, Bird confidently navigates the rivers of miscommunication between a shy, bookish mother and her truculent teenage son, who face the prospect of spending a miserable summer together.
These two misfits are initially sketched as caricatures, barely capable of exchanging a civil word as they wrestle with loneliness and abandonment in pastel-shaded middle-class suburbia.
“You’re always telling me to try new things,” bitterly complains the teenager during one exchange.
He angrily demands his mother provide a specific example.
“I don’t know,” she meekly and wearily retorts. “Olives?”
Monica Dolan demonstrates her dramatic range as well as impeccable comic timing as a despairing single parent, who is at her wit’s end trying to find a tiny scrap of common ground with her boy.
Bad Seeds singer Nick Cave’s son Earl reeks of sulking, adolescent angst and Tamsin Greig offers amusing support as a hippy Reiki master, who believes her healing hands can salve deep emotional wounds.
Mild-mannered librarian Sue Bagnold (Dolan) lives with her heavy metal-fixated 15-year-old son Daniel (Cave), who has reached the age when everything his mother says and does is a major irritation.
A proposed day trip to the seaside inspires a petulant outburst – “I hate the beach, I hate sand!” – and he repeatedly rolls his eyes behind tangles of greasy black hair when Sue suggests he might help out around the house with chores.
Daniel’s plan to spend six weeks in Florida with his father Bob and stepmother are cruelly dashed and he faces the bleak prospect of wallowing in self-pity under the same roof as his dowdy, divorced mother.
Sue encourages her boy to update his CV and find a holiday job but Daniel prefers to hang out with best mate Ky (Elliot Speller-Gillott) and daydream about becoming the lead singer of a nihilistic band called Skull Slayer.
Meanwhile, Sue entertains the possibility of a first date with Daniel’s history teacher, Mr Porter (Rob Brydon).
Younger sister Carol (Alice Lowe) fans the flames of Sue’s long dormant desire.
“You’ve been living like a nun for eight years. You’re allowed to have a bit of fun,” she contends.
Mother and son embark on separate paths to selfenrichment and unexpectedly grow closer.
Days of the Bagnold Summer charts a predictable narrative trajectory, underscored by a dreamy soundtrack courtesy of Scottish rock band Belle & Sebastian.
Loosely structured vignettes, including a toe-curling fudge-making demonstration replete with cameo from comedian Tim Key, tiptoe towards the obligatory catharsis for both lead characters.
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