You’re a writer, musician, artist, actor, model, archaeologist, spy, or whatever you’ve always wanted to be. You’ve been invited to a party through a friend of a friend. It’s at an out-of-town mansion owned by a mysterious millionaire.
It’s one of those hot summer evenings when it doesn’t even begin to get dark until long after the drink has begun its lubrication of thoughts and inhibitions. You meet someone new. There’s an instant attraction. It's a movie, remember.
The conversation flows: eye contact, smiles and laughter. You don’t know their name, nor they know yours. “Come on, let’s go!” Holding hands and giggling you take a freshly opened bottle from the kitchen table and go for a walk across the huge lawn and down to the stream…
Cut to a country road in France, Italy or Spain, an open-topped car, acres of lavender, cypress trees, the sun white hot, the breeze welcome. You bring the car to a halt and head towards an abandoned windmill on the brow of a hill through a cornfield, carrying a picnic of bread, cheese, tomatoes and wine.
It’s an idyllic afternoon and it’s nightfall by the time the car winds into the narrow, cobbled streets of the coastal village and you check into the ancient hotel. But is anything ever this perfect?
Each of these songs can accompany this movie but it can go wherever you want it to. Most are instrumental and were selected as “mood” pieces to help paint the picture of two people, recent strangers, now lovers, having an affair, taking a journey, discovering each other – dreamy, sun-kissed, and faintly exotic (which, to an English view, could be Latin, European or anywhere where the skies are a little bluer than home!).
The vocal tracks hint at aspects of the storyline; Dusty’s two strangers become lovers hoping to keep their secret in Pulp’s “David’s Last Summer”; The Flat Five, Giorgio Tum, and The Mamas & The Papas grasp the moment – that moment two lovers know is theirs, though they may never again recapture it. Broadcast and The Soundcarriers unite our two from the rest of the world (“Come On Let’s Go” is 21st century's greatest pop song – fact).
My grasp of French is not strong enough to know Polnareff’s lyrics, but the tune is an old favourite of mine and I want it in my movie (similarly Astrud Gilberto and Edu Lobo’s Brazilian cuts). Bowie’s majestic “Lady Grinning Soul”, another piano-propelled favourite, and Birdie’s “Let Her Go” suggest the man in this relationship may end up being the more vulnerable of the two. And finally, The Isleys’ “Summer Breeze” is just the ultimate salute to summer and the person you love.
Did it last or was it just a short idyllic summer a long time ago?
I hope you enjoy viewing and listening to it.
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