A Cold Summer

(2003)

It's been a while since I've cracked open the vault and dusted off some old VHS of an Australian film and reappraised it. Or whatever happens below.

A Cold Summer is a 2003 improvised drama focusing on three damaged individuals in Sydney over a period of time (hmm... a summer perhaps?). Tia (Olivia Pigeot), a jazz singer, is followed home one afternoon by a disheveled and drunken Bobby (Teo Gebert). After a brief argument, they have sex, then begin an affair, even though Tia has a boyfriend. Tia soon bumps into Phaedra (Susan Prior, quite good in the recent TV series Puberty Blues), an old friends who is still mourning the death of the love of her life 3 years after he died. Tia convinces the now socially inept Phaedra to pursue a fruit shop worker, but fails miserably. As Tia and Bobby continue their ruinous relationship, Phaedra finds out that Tia had sex with her ex and decides to get revenge by seducing Bobby. It turns out Bobby is living in his car after being kicked out by his wife. Also, it turns out Tia's life is a complete lie.

There are no winners here, including anyone who watches this impoverished piece of shit film. Oh dear... Pretty much improvised by the three cast member, it's all over-the-top melodrama at its worst and not really interesting at all. None of the characters are worth visiting and boy do they bang on about it, their behaviour barely rational and not deserving of any sympathy. This is definitely in the list of worst Australian films of all time, hell, when you watch it (I found it impossible to find, I don't even know how I come about it...), you'll find it tough to find an argument to say it doesn't belong on the worst list.

I'll tell you how hard it was to finally see A Cold Summer. In 2003, I tried to see this film in the only cinema it was playing (the now defunct Lumiere Cinema) on the Monday after it was released and it was already pulled. Then the movie disappeared off the face of the Earth, no videos or DVD release anywhere, not even here in Australia. Last year I came across a widescreen VHS of the movie (which must be one of last VHS of an Australian film seeing as though everything was pretty much DVD by 2003-2004) and finally got around to watching it, and well, as I explain above, hardly worth it. Ah well, I can at least tick it off the list of Australian films I watched.

Olivia Pigeot film clip (collages below)