Sunbeat

The debut movie „Sunbeat“ by sisters Clara and Laura Laperrousaze takes the viewer to the hot midsummery Portugal and its scorched hills where under the deceptively calm surface there bubble the past events.The young and beautiful parents Iris (Ana Girardot) and Gabriel (Clément Roussier) return to the family home in Portugal with their adorable twin daughters Emma and Zoe (Océane and Margaux Le Caoussin). Once they spent all their happy sultry summers here. Now the house has been empty for years.The summer passes in the rhythm of twins. They wake up in their parents’ bed, eat on the terrace hiding from the already hot sun, wander in the fields and on the riverbanks. But it doesn’t look like Iris is enjoying the summer. The sun and the breathtakingly golden summer are suffocating her and seeing Zoe and Emma and hearing their frank comments on nature and life in general hurts more and more.Iris and Gabriel are faced with something that both of them have buried deep into their souls and they have to find a way to accept the past and the future. Something dark is creeping into the lives of the redheaded angels through incomprehensible hints and bits and pieces that slowly sucks them in. It looks like the past is repeating itself.The sisters Laperrousaze have found little redheaded twins (who look like them at that age) to play the part and they study with gentleness and deep empathy the children’s reactions to and understandings of the signals, half-truths and the burden of fear and love of the adult world.The family’s anguish over the lost resonates perfectly with the oppressive, dry and deafeningly chirping midsummery Portuguese landscape, where even the night does not bring relief.

(Dagmar Raudam)