Genre Drama

My First Summer (2020)

Item: My First Summer
Rating: 2.0
Author: Ross McLaren

★★ — My First Summer (2020)

My First Summer is a 2020 Australian drama from independent production company Noise & Light, running a brief 78 minutes and pitched squarely at the quieter, more introspective end of the coming-of-age genre. Written and directed by Katie Found, it marks an early feature-length outing for a filmmaker whose background lies in short-form work, and it carries with it that particular quality common to debut features: a strong visual instinct coupled with the kind of tonal ambition that can be tricky to sustain across even a relatively short runtime. The film centres on Claudia, a sixteen-year-old girl who has grown up in near-total isolation on a remote rural property, and the relationship that blossoms when another girl, Grace, arrives in her life. It is, on paper, a gentle queer love story set against the Australian landscape, and that landscape does a considerable amount of the heavy lifting throughout.

Australia has produced no shortage of films that use its vast, sun-scorched terrain as an emotional register in itself, from the sun-bleached fury of something like Mad Max: Fury Road to the more intimate, folklore-drenched atmosphere of You Won't Be Alone, another Australian drama that leans heavily on landscape and isolation to carry its story. Found's film belongs to neither of those registers exactly, but it shares with them an interest in what the land itself communicates, the silence, the light, the sense of a world removed from ordinary social rhythms. The film's cinematography is one of its most discussed qualities, and it is easy to see why: the rural setting is rendered with a warmth and patience that gives the whole production a handmade, almost painterly quality. For a low-budget independent feature, it is polished but unhurried in its visual grammar. The tagline, "First love, first breath", sets the tone clearly enough: this is a film preoccupied with firsts, with the texture of experience arriving new and unfiltered.

The two central performances come from Markella Kavenagh as Claudia and Maiah Stewardson as Grace, with supporting work from Edwina Wren, Harvey Zielinski, and Steve Mouzakis. Kavenagh, an Australian actress who has built a steady career in both film and television, brings a watchful stillness to Claudia, a character defined by what she has never been allowed to know about the world. Stewardson, meanwhile, is asked to play a girl whose backstory involves profound trauma, and she brings a natural, unforced energy to the role. The pairing has a chemistry that is easy and convincing on a surface level, and it is easy to see why the film attracted attention on the festival circuit. Comparisons to other quiet, sun-warmed queer romances, such as Call Me by Your Name, are perhaps inevitable given the subject matter, and similarly the film shares thematic ground with Mustang, another drama concerned with young women, confinement, and the awakening of identity in a restricted world. Whether the performances are well-served by the material is, of course, a different question.

My First Summer (2020) is a film of beautiful surfaces and baffling depths, or rather, a lack thereof. The Australian bush has rarely looked more luminous on screen: golden light filtering through gum trees, misty mornings by the lake, intimate close-ups that capture every freckle and hesitant glance. The soundtrack swells with delicate restraint, and there's no denying the visual poetry director Katie Found brings to this isolated coming-of-age tale. On a purely aesthetic level, it's easy to admire. But aesthetics can't compensate for a plot that strains credulity at every turn. A teenage girl witnesses a suicide, meets the deceased's daughter (who has apparently lived in total seclusion, unknown to neighbours, authorities, or basic human logistics) and within hours they're sharing baths, meals, and whispered secrets like old friends. The emotion feels fundamentally misaligned: this is a girl who has just witnessed her mother's suicide, yet her reactions range from mildly curious to casually affectionate toward a complete stranger. The film replaces silence for depth, awkwardness for authenticity, and isolation for intimacy. What should be a haunting exploration of grief and connection instead feels emotionally weightless. The actresses do a good job, but ultimately the plot and the writing is abysmally poor. A visually lovely but narratively unconvincing drama that mistakes atmosphere for substance. The intentions are tender, the execution fatally off-key.

I'll say this for My First Summer: it is the kind of film that makes you wish it were better, which is its own sort of compliment, I suppose. The ingredients are genuinely there, the location, the performances, the visual patience, and there are moments where you can glimpse the more affecting film it might have been with a more grounded screenplay behind it. But good intentions and golden light will only carry a story so far, and when the emotional logic starts to creak, no amount of soft-focus gum trees can paper over the cracks. Worth watching if you're curious about what Found might do next with a stronger script, but perhaps approach it as a calling card rather than a complete work. Sometimes a beautiful surface is, frustratingly, all there is.

Rating: ★★ | Year: 2020 | Watched: 2026-04-05

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Trailer

▶ Watch the official trailer for My First Summer (2020) on YouTube

Where to watch

Watch in the UK
Stream: Sky Go · BFI Player · BFI Player Amazon Channel · Now TV Cinema
Rent: Apple TV Store · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies · Sky Store
Buy: Apple TV Store · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies · Sky Store
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi

Watch in the US
Rent: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon US

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