Film review: Summer in February (15)

Christopher Menaul’s group biopic tells of the intense and poignant love triangle that enveloped three of the key players. Dominic Cooper is Alfred ‘AJ’ Munnings, a drinker, poet and painter who quickly falls in love with – and marries – Florence Carter-Wood (Emily Browning).

The gooseberry in this particular pie is Downton Abbey star Dan Stevens who, as soldier and adventurer Gilbert Evans, misses his chance to land the girl of his dreams and spends the rest of the movie mooning over her.

Cooper – dark, flashing-eyed, seductive – works hard to balance the two sides of Munnings. On the one hand he is a dedicated artist, albeit one with a colossal ego. On the other he yearns for the domestic bliss of his friends, yet understands little of what marriage is about.

Menaul allows his camera to trace the beauty of the Cornish coast, ever mindful that the world is about to be shattered by conflict. But all of that seems a long way from idyllic Lamorna where Munnings and his cronies party, spout poetry and occasionally paint.

The triangle of anguish is nicely played. AJ’s coarseness is tempered by the gentlemanly, dependable but ineffective Gilbert. Meanwhile Florence – fragile, ethereal – ricochets between the man she married and the man she should be with. It’s classic stuff, if somewhat tepid.

Such a potentially explosive story demands a larger canvas than Menaul has been given, for this is a passionate, tragic story. At its simplest it focuses on a choice: between bad boy or steady gent. And everyone knows where that will end up.