Été
2017 · 19m
Directed by Gregory Oke
Genres: coming-of-age, drama, LGBTQ+
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
In the English countryside, a boy in his late teens confronts newly discovered desires and the internal conflicts they stir.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
It's competent, sure—tender English countryside coming-of-age about a queer kid figuring himself out—but it's the exact film everyone expected it to be, which means it's not really doing anything to justify its existence.
Oke's restraint is the film's formal argument: every melancholic pause, every compositional choice in the English landscape, builds toward a portrait of internal conflict that trusts silence over revelation—this is craft in service of emotional specificity, and it's situated squarely in the lineage of British introspective realism.
The decision to let the countryside itself become a mirror for the boy's confusion—to photograph longing through negative space rather than performance—is what separates this from a dozen other late-teens-figuring-it-out shorts, and it's executed with the kind of restraint that proves you don't need budget to make absence speak.
Reviews
Gregory Oke's Été continues the tradition, but this time emphasizing more on the internal conflict with newly discovered desires than their fate. The intermingled guilt and desire—and likely even a generous dose of horror—that Rhys experiences is evident and endearing.