A Summer Day on AllMovie

As summer fades from a small French town, young adolescent Sebastien (Baptiste Bertin) struggles with his own sexual identity and with internalized, often contradictory erotic feelings, in director Franck Guerin's understated coming-of-ager A Summer Day. Sebastien spends the majority of his time assisting his single father (Philippe Fretun) in the latter's garage, but warms even more to palling around with male friend Mickael (Theo Frilet - a boy he quietly finds sensual and erotic. When a bizarre accident involving a soccer goal post kills Mikael, the event not only plunges the town into a state of perpetual horror, but leaves Sebastien doubly conflicted and confused about his feelings for the boy. He finds a partial salvation in a friendship with Mickael's mother (Catherine Mouchet); to the same degree that Sebastien seeks her out, filially, as a maternal surrogate, she looks to him as a much-needed substitute for the son she lost. Meanwhile, Sebastien's burgeoning awareness of his own homosexuality grows more concrete, but an open admission and embrace of this identity seem utterly impossible given the gross hypocrisies and backward sexual repression that plague the community. Guerin and Agnes Feuvre co-authored the script.