As the heat rises during the summer months, so too can the emotional temperature – something many celebrated film-makers have captured with their depictions of intense seasonal flings. Most of us know what it is to have a summer fling; probably as much from life experience as any motion picture about the subject. There's the listless feeling of adolescent summer holiday boredom; the irritation of the heat; the chance to meet at beaches, parks, pools, or in foreign spots where everyone is thrown out of their usual rhythms.
There's just something about the blue skies of a hot summer that can drive people to romantic fantasy and lustful thinking, and cinema has long chased the depiction of that usually all-too-brief excitement. Ephemeral and sexy, hot summer romances have been depicted by film-makers from Eric Rohmer to Spike Lee to Luca Guadagnino. Here are 10 of the very best.
Terrence Malick's languorous summer romance is one that goes chillingly awry – that is to say, on a largely unmotivated killing spree. A sociopathic but charming young man, Kit (Martin Sheen, aping James Dean) and a younger, wide-eye teen, (an unforgettable Sissy Spacek, with a drawling, poetic voiceover) hit the road and begin to kill, with very little reason or even particular animus. Based on a real series of shocking murders by a teen couple in 1950s America, Malick uses the lovers-on-the-run trope of films like Bonnie and Clyde (1967) to create a less frenetic and more disturbing vision of young.