Review: ‘In the Summers’ shows an evolving bond between divorced dad and his two daughters

As “In the Summers” begins, Vicente is anxious. Sitting in his car, obsessively flicking his lighter, absentmindedly banging his hand on the steering wheel to calm his nerves, this working-class everyman looks out the window, waiting. The most important time of the year for Vicente is about to start — the season that defines him. His two young daughters finally emerge from the airport, and he excitedly goes to receive them. The summers are when he gets to be a dad. The summers are his chance to prove himself.

Told in four chapters over the span of a little less than 20 years, Colombian American writer-director Alessandra Lacorazza’s gorgeous feature debut may call to mind other singular indies such as “Moonlight” and “Aftersun” in its structure and themes, but this deceptively modest autobiographical drama is so precise and insightful that it comfortably occupies its own emotional landscape. It’s a film about that father, but it is also about his little girls, who won’t be so little for long.

The first chapter lays the groundwork for the film’s narrative framework. Vicente (played by rapper René Pérez Joglar, who records under the name Residente) lives in Las Cruces, N.M., in his late mother’s home. He moved there at some point after he and his wife divorced, and now he gets custody of Eva (Luciana Quinonez) and her older sister Violeta (Dreya Renae Castillo), who normally reside with their mom in California, only during the summers. Eva and Violeta may be grade-school age, still impressionable enough to look up to their gregarious, affectionate dad, but they can detect the faint cracks in his jovial surface. Vicente drinks a little too much, blows his top a little too easily. He wants his daughters to have a good time in Las Cruces, but what he really wants is for them to know that he’s a great father. The divorce is never mentioned, but Vicente is still fighting that battle.

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The opening segment ends on a curious, ambiguous note — Violeta impulsively decides to cut her hair boyishly short, which sets off her conservative-minded father — that will inform much that follows. Over the ensuing three chapters, in much the same manner as “Moonlight,” “In the Summers” keeps jumping forward in time. Eva and Violeta will return to Las Cruces — both sisters don’t always make the trip, however — as we witness the shift in this father-daughter relationship during these pivotal summers. (Older actors play the daughters in subsequent chapters.) Lacorazza is a filmmaker who values showing over telling, resisting big speeches that lay out the characters’ mind-sets. Instead, a few images that repeat across chapters explain everything. Just watch as Vicente’s once-pristine backyard pool gradually degrades from neglect.

Winner of the Grand Jury Prize and the Directing Award at this year’s Sundance, “In the Summers” springs from Lacorazza’s memories of her late father, and the film’s most shocking moment, a car ride that serves as the second part’s disquieting finale, happened almost exactly the same way in real life. A filmmaker drawing from personal experience can sometimes risk suffering from a lack of perspective — she knows these incidents so intimately, but the audience is left on the outside — but once this richly observed, patiently crafted drama’s structure becomes apparent, each new chapter possesses a gripping suspense.

How have the three characters changed since we last saw them? And how might this new summer heal (or worsen) the invisible wounds inflicted in the previous chapter? Lacorazza’s movie is one of gradations, the daughters in the later chapters subtly carrying the cumulative disappointment and stubborn love these woman still harbor for their flawed father. Vicente and his girls have trouble speaking directly to the fault lines that have built up over the years between them. Lacorazza holds that tension, her characters’ sad smiles speaking volumes.

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The rotating actors who portray Eva and Violeta are all superb — especially Sasha Calle and Lío Mehiel in the final chapter, which drives home Lacorazza’s meditation on resignation and acceptance. But Pérez Joglar’s Vicente, similarly to Paul Mescal’s troubled Calum in “Aftersun,” is both the film’s centerpiece and its greatest mystery. A maddening combination of good intentions and self-destructive tendencies — accommodating sensitivity and unforgivable pettiness — Vicente has a sharp mind for math, physics and astronomy that he loves sharing with his daughters. But as played by Pérez Joglar, making his feature acting debut, this prideful father also is consumed with the belief that life never gave him a fair shake, and he takes that resentment out on everyone around him. It’s a performance full of repressed bitterness, and the pain comes through most clearly once Vicente recognizes that his kids will grow out of their unquestioning adoration for their old man. As much as he tries to convince them he’s a terrific dad, he can’t disguise his failings — including his inability to hold onto a job or a partner — but it’s his insistence on propping up that illusion that becomes the movie’s tragedy. Much like his girls, we never truly see all of Vicente because he’s so determined to hide himself.

But families have a way of understanding one another in ways the rest of us can never fully grasp. Intriguingly, Lacorazza opts not to include subtitles for the film’s Spanish dialogue. Vicente occasionally uses Spanish with his daughters, who know what he’s saying but prefer to speak in English. “I made this choice to allow audiences to engage with emotions that transcend language,” Lacorazza has explained, and for those who don’t speak Spanish (like this reviewer), the choice achieves the desired effect.

But it also adds another grace note to this delicate, sophisticated portrait of class, sexuality and parenthood. There may be times during “In the Summers” when you will not comprehend every single thing that’s said. But the characters do, sharing a private language of family dysfunction and unexpressed anguish. The rest of us can watch — we may even understand the gist of their conversations — but their world is theirs alone. It is a testament to this deeply moving film that Lacorazza has laid bare her own complicated feelings about her father while acknowledging that, as shown in a silently shattering final scene, sometimes words fail.