13-year-old Rodrigo is a solitary teenager who finds solace in his intimate relationship with his mother, Valeria. She is his best friend, his protector, and his entire world. When her new boyfriend comes to live in their small house on the outskirts of Mexico City, however, Rodrigo finds his domain completely disrupted. He must decide if he should accept his new family or fight back and hurt the person he loves the most.

Our notes: Head-shaved and shirt-off with a cigarette stashed just so behind his ear, Rodrigo sports a grand façade of hardened manliness as he nurtures a burgeoning pyromania and brazenly runs atop junkyard cars somewhere on the outskirts of Mexico City. However, behind his surly posturing, the peach-fuzzy 13-year-old still clings to the comforts of his fading boyhood status—gingerly dipping a toe into independence, albeit sleeping nestled in the arms of his single mother when night seems too foreboding. The gorgeously shot Summer White carves a unique lane for itself in the coming-of-age genre as it recounts a contentious period for Rodrigo, who is further along into adolescence than he is ready to be.

The igniting moment of that contentious period is when Rodrigo’s mother Valeria welcomes her new boyfriend Fernando into their small, lower-middle class two-bedroom. The romance is an encroachment on the oddly intimate relationship between mother and son, who are at a stage where behavior typical of early childhood rearing has taken on a more abnormal appearance. So as Fernando’s presence becomes more regular and his claim to a fatherly role increases, Rodrigo’s Oedipal jealousies surge and his presence at home becomes erratic. Soon, scenes of driving lessons, home repair, and gift giving all become acts charged with subjugation. Cigarette privileges revoked, the petite flame of Rodrigo’s jittery little Zippo serves only an ostentatious display, but the teenager is willing to put that to the test.

Summer White is reminiscent of the very best of recent coming-of-age movies—from Water Lilies, to Tomboy, to Girlhood—while also offering a refreshing patience and appreciation for a protagonist for whom words do not come naturally. Director Rodrigo Ruiz Patterson’s debut narrative feature is about the difficulty of human relations, especially amongst those closest to us, and the hurdles of learning to communicate at a time when every experience and emotion feels new and complex. Engulfed in a crushing soundscape of highways, discotheques, and chatty elders, the largely nonverbal Rodrigo must find a way to announce himself, in this painterly film that is nostalgic for the sort of melancholy that shapes you. – Mitchell Goodrich, MdFF