“Well, if you want chips.”

From Summerland.

As WWII rages in Europe, writer Alice Lamb (Gemma Arterton) is perfectly content to shut out the world while she works on her newest book, in fact as everyone else in Kent knows, Alice is rude and reclusive on even the very best of days.  When someone knocks on her door, Alice is surprised to find that she has been assigned to host a young boy named Frank (Lucas Bond) that has been evacuated from the dangers in London.  Alice wants nothing more than to be left alone and to avoid hosting Frank, but with nowhere else for the boy to go at the moment, Alice is forced to take him in for a week.  At school, Frank befriends the independent Edie (Dixie Egerickx), and at home, Frank and Alice fall into an uneasy rhythm as the kind boy begins to break through the stubborn writer’s defenses.  While the school principal, Mr. Sullivan (Tom Courtenay), searches for a replacement home, Alice begins to share her research on legendary myths with Frank, and the two quickly bond over the worlds in her research.  However, the more Alice lets Frank in, the more she is forced to face the painful memories of her time with her long lost love, Vera (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), and the life they could have have together.  As the end of their week draws closer, Alice is willing to have Frank stay with her until it is safe to return to London, but when she learns something terrible about his pilot father, it threatens to destroy all the good Frank has brought into her life.

This war drama builds a world that is planted reality with a few touches of fantasy to really bring the story to life.  Arterton and Bond easily bring their polar opposites to life, as their genuine attitudes are always easy to believe.  For the majority of the film, the story seems fairly straightforward and simple, but a few twists really take the story to another level.  Summerland is a sweet look at overcoming the pain of the past to open up to new possibilities.

| Rated: PG| Running Time: 100 minutes |Genre: drama/war|

||Family Viewing||Cursing: 2 of 10|Nudity: 0 of 10|Sexuality: 0 of 10|Gore: 1 of 10

|AVAILABLE FOR HOME VIEWING|