Summertime

Summertime (La Belle Saison, 2015) is a French-Belgian drama directed by Catherine Corsini — watch it online on iFILM. Izïa Higelin and Cécile de France play two women whose collision in 1971 Paris reshapes both their lives entirely.

Delphine is twenty-three, fresh off a farm in rural France, determined to build something independent in the city. Carole is older, politically consumed by the nascent feminist movement, and already in a relationship with a man. They fall for each other fast. Summer, though, has a way of ending: a family crisis pulls Delphine back to the countryside, and Carole follows. What the farm and the village ask of them is something the Paris marches never prepared either of them for.

Corsini keeps the politics in the frame without letting them swallow the film — there are meetings, pamphlets, the charged atmosphere of early '70s France — but the story stays rooted in two specific people rather than in ideas. It's a film that earns its emotional weight through restraint. Stream Summertime (La Belle Saison, 2015) online on iFILM.