During World War II, Alice suddenly has an evacuee named Frank staying with her having to change and adapt her whole life around this as she attempts to write. Not really understand how he has ended up with her when you had to volunteer, but a lovely bond begins to form between the pair.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
It's 1945 in England and Alice has been living alone for a long time now and the local children around the cottage where she lives see her as a witch because of this, living in the village in Kent as the war rages on. One day everything would be turned upside down when a young boy names Frank has been evacuated from London and she is due to care for him. She wants to get rid of him within a week, but lets him stay.
We then see her past trauma in flashbacks and that she was in love with a woman named Vera during their time at University. She has her heartbroken though when Vera declares that she wants nothing more than to be a mother and obviously that was not possible with Alice.
Alice and Frank begin to bond when he shows interest in her scholarly work and this brings them closer together. Even if she is still willing to let him leave, she does eventually have a change of heart when finding out everything will have to change for him again. Not wanting to do that she begins to prepare a more permanent room for him and actually keeps a very tough thing from him, learning that his father has been killed in the war she puts off telling him only for someone at school to break it to him.
While all of that is simmering she then finds a photograph of Frank and his parents and everything makes a little bit more sense in terms of how he has ended up with her. His mother is none other than Vera, and she wanted to make sure if anything happened to her in London that Alice would care for him.
Summerland is a truly lovely film and I seriously do not think that we have enough lovely films and wish that we had more like this in all honesty. Even if parts were a little bit predictable in terms of what was going to happen next I really did not care about that at all. I felt the ending just finished it off so nicely seeing that the two women got to be together after all and Frank was more than happy with that situation.
The performances are very good with Gemma Arterton doing a great job in leading the film and quite frankly she just seems to do so very well in World War II films. I have become quite a fan in recent years that's for sure. Then we add in Gugu Mbatha-Raw who is fantastic, maybe we should have had a few more scenes with her in though? Then Penelope Wilton was great casting as an older Arterton! Lucas Bond puts in a powerful performance as well, a young actor given a rather interesting role that he does so very well.
