2021) We are in a stage of revival of the 90s without quarter. After the phenomenal Netflix trilogy ‘La calle del terror’ (Fear Street, 2021) now comes to Amazon prime video the interesting look at the teenage thriller ‘Cruel Summer’, a classic high school telenovela with a criminal plot that It is set 30 years ago, recovering the stage with the looks, costumes and, above all, music of the time.
Its 10 episodes are self-concluding, the story that tells at least, but a second season is being prepared that has not been clarified if it would repeat characters or work as an anthology, which would make sense as the series ends. What makes her different from others of the same fur is her different and potentially disconcerting narrative device: each episode of ‘Cruel Summer’ takes place on a single date in 1993, 1994 and 1995 simultaneously. From scene to scene, the story moves in units of a year.
The time frame of the series is like that of Greta Gerwig’s ‘Little Women’, but with three parallel time frames instead of two, rapidly oscillating between them in each episode, as it progresses, a year or two apart, sheds clues to its mysteries. At the center of it all is Jeanette (Chiara Aurelia), a shy girl with dental braces we met for the first time on her fifteenth birthday, whom we see transformed into a very transformed teenager a year later, and a devastated young woman under suspicion of the police the following year.
Disturbed behavior
On the other side of the scale is Kate (Olivia Holt), the classic hottie and popular high school barbie, who is kidnapped and disappeared in 1994, and deals with the psychological consequences of this in the next. Each episode has a different point of viewIf the first episode is seen through Jeanette the next through Kate’s eyes, sometimes scenes are repeated from different perspectives, as if we were in ‘Rashomon’, and blank spaces are filled in and dots that seemed unconnected.
It’s impossible not to be unhealthy in curiosity as to what exactly happened for Jeanette, envious of Kate at first, to transform into an equally popular girl and what does that have to do with Kate’s ordeal. A setting that series creator Bert V. Royal, (working alongside Jessica Biel as producer) uses to launch some distracting rockets focusing some overloaded subplots on the characters around them, including friends and parents, whose relationships mix dizzyingly from year to year as well.
When ‘Cruel Summer’ works best is when it explores the evolution of Jeanette, who, thanks to the great performance of Aurelia, seems an almost completely different character in each of the years, and within her alibi of teenage crime drama she does a deconstruction of the archetypes of institute, from the “mean girls” to the innocent girl and nerd, defying tropes, towards a modernized portrait of adolescence in which roles are reversed And the nerdy girl is not so innocent Although there are more murky issues that are put to the test.
An exquisitely sinister junior novel
Love with a difference in age with 15 years, gender violence or, above all, grooming, are seen from a not frivolous perspective and in some moments we have the feeling of seeing a much more mature thriller than you can afford a product that does not stop having a teenage audience. It’s as if ‘Pretty Little Liars’ or ‘Riverdale’ are getting older, so Biel’s experience in ‘The Sinner’ makes one understand why this project has caught his attention.
And this is curious because in terms of dialogue, direction, acting and production values, ‘Cruel Summer’ does not differ from a CW channel show, but its themes and unusual storytelling technique give it a touch of special interest that goes beyond his nostalgic alibi for navel piercings, flannel shirts and The Cranberries. This is not to say that there is not a whole jukebox of good music, sometimes with covers, and very often with excellent use of the songs, especially in the final episode.
‘Cruel Summer’ lives up to its name by using summer as the ideal climate for its twisted thriller, able to keep your attention wondering who is telling the truth without taking obvious routes or stepping on well-worn terrain. An intelligent, original entertainment with the soul of a pulp teenager that could not have hurt to file some stories of secondary characters to leave it in 8 episodes, but that at least is aware of its nature and does not try to dramatize quite delicate topics solving his difficult puzzle with an outcome to match and an exquisitely sinister final coda.