Mindfulness, the Eastern thought-influenced practice encouraging living in, and focusing on, the present moment, is still all the rage. While evidence clearly supports the health and wellness value of mindfulness as an orientation and as a set of practices, its brain-altering potential is ripe forhorrorand horror comedy parody. InMiguel Llansó’sInfinite Summer, the lives of a group of young women are changed forever when they encounter Dr. Mindfulness (Ciaron Davies). His mysterious mindfulness technology has a much stronger, weirder impact than the young women could ever imagine.It’s a coming-of-age tale, an exploration of our near-future world of reality-warping consumer tech, and a send-up of our quick-enlightenment culture, all rolled into one.
It won’t be the first time a wellness practice has been skewered in a horror comedy. Yoga has been touched on in films likeKevin Smith’sYoga Hosers,Alex HenesandMatthew Merenda’s recentMind Body Spirit, andprovided the goriest horror kill of the yearinIn a Violent Nature.Purported wellness cleanses have been taken on inThe Cleanse.Ben Wheatley’sIn The EarthandJaco Bouwer’sGaiashine a dark lens on ‘close to the Earth’ communities, while Animal Rights activists are a common plot device in almost any movie where animals need to be released to spread a plague (famouslyAlex Garland’s28 Days Later). Here, an advance in mindfulness (with hints of surreality and conspiracy) is creatively used to walk us through a young woman’s path of self-discovery.
Infinite Summer
Infinite Summer is a coming-of-age story set in a small coastal town. The film centers on a group of teenagers who embark on a summer filled with adventure, love, and self-discovery. As they confront personal challenges and forge lasting memories, they learn valuable lessons about friendship and growing up.
What is ‘Infinite Summer’ About?
Ah, the joys of summer: sun, friendship, meeting mysterious mindfulness app developers from the internet. On the cusp of young adulthood, Mia (Teele Kaljuvee-O’Brock) plans to spend some quality time with her best friend Grete (Johanna Rosin) in a beautiful little getaway in Tallinn, Estonia. The only problem is that Grete’s focus has become divided, now enamored with the attention of the more worldly Sarah (Hannah Gross). Grete and Sarah’s talk of parties and excursions with men isolates Mia. The young women’s Extreme Dating app introduces them to an oddity of a man, one who goes by Dr. Mindfulness, who Mia talks to in a moment of loneliness. He stops by unannounced (red flag!), but with a gift:his unique mindfulness app that involves an odd (and a little suspect) respirator and some mysterious inhalants. Mia tries it, largely out of boredom and cynicism about its utility. It welcomes her to ‘Eleusis’, the name of the app’s ‘meditation instructor’ in the form of a smoke-filled, spiraling, talking wormhole. Eventually, all her companions try the odd device, setting them on an increasingly surreal path as the device starts to change themand a pair of Interpol detectives investigate a cyber-crime that’s somehow connected to the device.
It’s a well-chosen set-up for asurreal exploration of the weirdness of transitional ages and their attendant self-discovery. Mia finds herself at an odd distance from her long-time friend who’s in a hurry to grow up fast, alienated from her own romantic and sexual desires, and she’s still thinking about what she wants to do with her life. It’s a vulnerable time to explore strange substances, here an AI-companioned drug with wild transformative power that seems to have a mind of its own. The device is a smart one in this coming-of-age tale, as both a catalyst for sudden change and a mysterious source of conspiracy and change. What’s really going on is much bigger and weirder than the self-anointed Dr. Mindfulness, with an AI-powered mystery company sending out waves of devices for a purpose that has to be seen to be believed.Infinite Summeris a thoughtful, surreal dive into learning to embrace yourselfand emerge from your shell, no matter how scary (or what you have to do to get there).
‘Infinite Summer’ Is an Enigmatic, Drug-Fueled, Mind-Bending Coming-of-Age Tale
The core ofInfinite Summeris Mia, our protagonist and the anchor through a somewhat chaotic world. Teele Kaljuvee-O’Brock is excellent in the role, landing the character’s demographic and personal uncertainty in alayered and nuanced central performance. While the more surreal sci-fi elements are largely successful, Mia’s most grounded moments are the best. Her interactions with her father, played byIvo Uukkivi, are warm and thoroughly charming, and there’s a great dynamic here between Mia and Grete, a longtime friend that Mia perhaps desired more from, and Mia and Sisi (Sissi Nylia Benita), a very patient young woman who shares a mutual crush with the shy protagonist. Mia’s path towards self-discovery and embracing her sexuality becomes intimately tied to an out-of-this-world finale, but it’s these quieter moments that steal the show.
Infinite Summeruses the plot device of a ‘meditation app’ well,its ability to transform and connect is utilized to examine a central character who needs to transform so she can connect. Given the film’s subtext, what Mia needs to embrace most is her own sexuality. Eleusis' meditation program involves a surreal, communal orgasm of sorts as the next stage of its program (accompanied by spindly, body-crawling smoke hands). Grete and Sarah are quickly enveloped into this track, but it has deleterious effects on them. When Mia later attempts it, Eleusis rejects her as its smoky, ethereal appendages retract into the program’s wormhole. Eleusis seems to promise connection in this regard: when the Eleusis-affected Grete plans to take Mia to a secret rendezvous, she cryptically tells her “the summer is eternal, Mia. We’re inside a bubble, on top of a wave, going on, and on, and on, but you and I, we’ll stay together forever,” eternity and connection within an infinite summer. When Mia finally embraces her desires in a sweet scene with Sisi and Grete, the trio are able to connect in an entirely different way.
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Infinite Summerisn’t a perfect film.It frustratingly doesn’t answer every question it poses, including some that are important for the basic facts of the narrative and its world, and there’s a lot of reading between the lines involved in any excursion into its deeper meanings. It takes a little time to click in thematically and regarding some of the film’s performances. The surrealism (and occasional bouts of body horror-lite) are clever symbolic routes to explore some of these issues, but as much as they’re intellectually interesting, they don’t always maximize the emotional resonance of these pivotal changes that characters go through. That said, it’s a clever journey that capably showcases the importance of embracing all aspects of one’s subordinated self as part of the journey towards both wholeness and adulthood.
‘Infinite Summer’ Is Enigmatic, Warm, Complex, and Unmissable
Infinite Summeris a pleasant conundrum. Its visuals are largely breezy, its themes are palpable and weighty, and its plot devices complex and conspiratorial.It has a lot to say, and at the same time says little of it directly. While it doesn’t exhibit the same level of mastery, it’s a bit like the Mona Lisa: a layered, mysterious visage with so much more seemingly bubbling under the surface. It takes a lot of analysis and inference to figure out the ‘what’ and ‘why’ ofInfinite Summer, and wedding these themes so intimately to surreal, under-explained plot devices blunts their emotional impact at times, but the journey is largely worth it. Mia’s a muted but warm character whose journey reflects so many who took more time than they’d prefer to embrace their true selves, here emboldened by an ethereal cocktail of chemicals for purposes unknown. It’sperhaps the wildest coming-of-age tale audiences will see in 2024, but one treated warmly and handled overall with care, creating an occasionally confounding journey that’s not to be missed.
‘Infinite Summer’ is a thoughtful, surreal coming-of-age tale about the embrace and transcendence of the bodily self.
Infinite Summerhad its World Premiere at the 2024 Fantasia International Film Festival.
