Divine Sung's feature debut Summer's Camera, which had its world premiere at this year's BFI Flare, is a charming coming-of-age tale that examines the themes of first love and grief. This Korean-set film follows Summer, a teenager who becomes enamoured with Yeonwoo, the standout football player at her high school. Summer—who has a wonderfully analogue hobby in the form of film photography—is seldom spotted without the camera of the title, which once belonged to her father and houses a roll of film he began before his untimely death. Quite understandably, Summer can't bring herself to take the final few photographs.
This changes, however, once Yeonwoo quite literally enters the frame, stirring emotions in Summer that inspire her to click the shutter of the Nikon until the film runs out. Once the photographs are developed, Summer studies both her shots of Yeonwoo and the pictures taken by her dad, and in the latter set she notices a man she doesn't recognise. It's not exactly the severed ear that kickstarts the events of David Lynch's Blue Velvet, but given that Summer seems unconvinced by the official version of her father's death—it's said he died in a car crash—the stage appears to be set for a mystery in which she will play detective.
Yet Divine Sung proceeds to wrongfoot her audience by having Summer track down the mystery man—who, it transpires, owns a hair salon—in short order, leaving the film to unfold as a character study, one that deftly captures the peculiar combination of joy and awkwardness that is so often a feature of first love. Sung is aided by a note-perfect performance from Kim Si-a as Summer; hitherto best known for her prominent supporting role in the Netflix film Kill Boksoon, Kim is entirely convincing as the high schooler attempting to reconcile the emotions of a grieving daughter with those of a new girlfriend.
Sung's movie is beautifully shot, with much emphasis on the warm, tactile nature of "real" photography as Summer carefully handles her camera equipment. The film possesses an oneiric quality that serves to place Summer in a tolerant, gracious society, with this ethereal atmosphere only undercut by the incongruous punk rock songs that bookend the film. Yet such dissonance reflects both the protagonist's jumble of feelings and the difficulties of navigating those oh-so-tricky teenage years. Summer's Camera may look controlled and measured, but an undercurrent of divine chaos lies beneath its sweet, stately surface.
